A Killing Kind of Love: A Dark, Standalone Romantic Suspense (30 page)

He lifted his arm from his eyes. “I’d say you’re right.” He touched her hair, smoothing a couple of damp tendrils behind her ear. “Do you know why it’s so good?”

“Are you angling for love-god status again?”

“Hell, no. That’s a given.” He grinned, but it didn’t stick. “Try again, Camryn.” He ran his index finger down her cheek, along her jaw, his own set hard, too sober and serious.

“A shared orgasm?” she quipped. “Rare things, those.”

“I’ll admit that was sensational, but”—he shook his head—“still not it.”

No, that wasn’t it . . .

Camryn was afraid the real “good” between them was something else entirely, something that had arrived unbidden—and far too early. Like an inconsiderate guest. She refused to give it a name. That would encourage it, and she didn’t know yet if she could handle it, was even ready for it.

She kissed him quickly, then rolled to her back and stared at the ceiling, invisible in the dark afternoon. A gust of wind batted the window, and the scent of sex, clean sweat, and Dan’s musky aftershave perfumed her nose.

When she didn’t answer, he said, “Okay, I’ll say it for you. The reason we’re so good in bed together, Dan, is because there’s something going on between us outside of it. Something I’m not ready for.” He raised himself, and the last of the light made his head a shadow on her breasts. “That about cover it?”

He’d spoken her very thought. Which, oddly, made her more confused than ever. She took a breath but didn’t look at him. “You’re right, I wasn’t expecting . . . someone like you, and I’m not ready.”

“Why not?”

She turned to face him. “Because the timing couldn’t be worse. It’s too soon, Dan. You know that.”

“Not too soon for great sex, but too soon to talk about anything that might happen beyond it. Is that what you’re saying?”

She squirmed inwardly, admitting it didn’t make sense. It’s the sex that should be on hold . . . not the feelings around it. God, he’d made her illogical. She was woman enough to know what that meant. “Come to think of it, it’s too soon for the sex, too.”

He cocked his head. “I’d leave that where it lies, Camryn.” He bent to lightly kiss her, and her breath caught. “There’s no going back on that decision. That horse—as a wise man once said—is long out of its gate.”

He was right again, but she wasn’t about to tell him that, especially while he was tracing her nipple with an exquisitely deft middle finger. “We could stop. This could be the end of it, right here.”
And elephants could fly
…
or was that pigs?
She couldn’t remember. The soft abrading by his slow and easy finger had erased the image.

Leaning down, he kissed the nipple he’d been torturing. “You think?”

“Unfair, Lambert.” She sensed his smile against her ear.

“There’s no ‘fair,’ and there’s no right schedule, Camryn,” he said. “But if you want to wait to talk about what’s next—after what we’ve just had—that’s fine with me. I’ll find ways to amuse myself.” He nuzzled her throat. “Besides, I already know what I needed to know.”

“Which is,” she choked out and closed her eyes. She very much liked his mouth against her throat.

“You trust me.”

She opened her eyes to see his gaze focused on her. She knew her own eyes were questioning.

“You trust me that this—you and I in bed together—is about us and not—”

“A premeditated seduction on your part to get your daughter?”

He nodded, and for the briefest moment looked uncertain.

Camryn touched his face. “You’re right. I do trust you. What I don’t know is what to do about you.”

“The timing thing again?”

When she nodded, he nodded, then kissed her. “There’s no politically correct moment for what’s happening between us, Camryn. No right time for people to get interested in each other. And there’s no such thing as bad timing.” His hand stroked and caressed the indent of her waist. “But speaking of timing, we have a couple of lonely hours left before we go to the Solaris’. Got any idea how we might use them?” He pulled her closer.

“I think I can come up with something.” She ran her hand over his flat stomach, through crisp pubic hair, to where he wasn’t flat at all.

“I like the way your mind works,” he said, his breath turning ragged.

And I can’t think of a better way to put off today what I’ll have to think about tomorrow.

Dan Lambert bursting into her comfortable, workaday, logical life was like a meteor hitting the desert. Their attraction was rash, thoughtless, and totally unexpected. She needed to think about it. What it might mean to her and Kylie’s future—or if there’d be one.

But in the meantime . . .

Paul Grantman started back from the lakeshore, first crossing a stretch of manicured lawn before his grass-dampened feet hit the softly lit, inlaid-brick path leading to his house. Other lights illuminated a pair of tall cedars at the side of the property, and the evening mist gathering at their base.

It was almost time for Maury to pick up Delores, so in less than an hour, the miserable bitch would be on his doorstep, and he’d be kissing her cheek and pretending they were old friends.

He hated to admit it, but, damn it, on some vague level the woman frightened him. She was such a bizarre mixture of shrewdness and bone-mean, you never knew what the hell she’d pull.

He told himself none of that mattered; all he wanted from her tonight was information about Adam Dunn, and what his intentions were toward Kylie. Simple enough. Then she was out of here.

If that scheming two-bit asshole was after his granddaughter, he’d be the sorriest son of a bitch to have ever walked this earth. Paul would make sure of it.

He looked up the path to see Erin coming toward him. She was dressed in jeans and wearing a white lacy top that bared the rise of her breasts, enough that his breathing faltered. She smiled softly, and as she neared him, put her hand out toward him. His heart, as it always did, tripped in his chest.

It struck him he was afraid of Erin, too. Afraid of what he felt for this sad, sick nymph of a woman, a woman too young for him, too much trouble for him; a woman whose life continued to spiral out of control and threatened to take his with it.

No fool like an old fool,
he sighed to himself.

He took her hand. “What are you doing out here? Have you abandoned my granddaughter? Who, by the way, I’m convinced you love more than me.”

“Kylie’s sleeping, and Anya’s there, and I wanted to talk to you.”

“Then let’s go inside.” He nodded at her gauzy top, one that would barely stop her from tanning, let alone stay the autumn breeze coming off the lake. “You’ll catch your death.” He took off his windbreaker and draped it over her shoulders.

“I’d like to stay out here.” She breathed in the night air, seemed to savor it. “Where the air is clear.” She added the rhyme and smiled.

“Okay.”

“Thanks for this.” Holding his jacket by the lapels, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “But that ‘catch your death’ comment makes you sound like the dad I never had—which you definitely aren’t.”

She looked up at him, her face pale, and more serene than he’d seen it in months. “I love you, you know. Or are you sick of hearing me say that?”

He hugged her close and whispered into her hair. “That’s something I’ll never get tired of hearing.”

“Even when I’m an old woman and—”

“I’m an even older man?” He shook his head, then kissed hers. “No. You’re who I want. Who I’ve always wanted. The day I met you, I quit looking at the calendar.”

“Except to count my clean and sober days.” She pulled away and gave him an odd, shaky smile. “You’ve used the calendar for that—and so have I.”

Paul frowned. It wasn’t like Erin to bring up her problem, and it certainly wasn’t like her to smile when she did. He set her away from him, so he could see her face. “What’s going on, Erin?”

“I’ve, uh, made a decision …”

“And?”

She tightened his jacket around her and lifted her chin. “I’ve booked myself into rehab. I arranged it this morning. I’ll be leaving the day after tomorrow.”

If she’d told him she’d decided to skydive without a parachute, he couldn’t have been more shocked. They’d battled over this for months, and she’d resisted his every effort to get her in any of the best drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities in the country. “It isn’t that I’m not happy—damn it, I couldn’t be more so—but why now? I don’t understand.”

“It’s Kylie.” She took a few steps away. “I love her. So much. I hate the thought she can’t stay, but—”

“A temporary situation. I’ll fix—”

She lifted a hand and shook her head. “No. I’m not here for that. I don’t want you to fix anything. Not anymore. Next month I’ll be thirty-three. And after last night, I think it’s time I started fixing myself.” Before he could reply, she took his hand. “It’s starting to rain. You’ll get wet. Come with me.” She led him to the gazebo that sat between the tall cedars, taking them out of the rain and away from the wind.

Erin sat on the bench that circled the inside of the gazebo and pulled him down beside her. “Last night? Before you found me outside of Camryn’s house?”

He nodded.

“I had dinner with my girlfriends—like I planned, but when I left them . . . when I was alone . . .” She let out a breath. “I went to buy cocaine.”

“Oh God, Erin.”

“No, it’s okay. It didn’t happen.” She stopped. “It wasn’t meant to happen.”

“Go on.”

“The closer I got to downtown Seattle, the more scared I got. The more confused I got. I thought about you, about Kylie, about what you were going to do to get her—for me. I thought about what a mess I was. How I’d gone out that night intending to go to dinner with friends, and now I was in my car pointed to the nearest drug dealer as if I was on autopilot.”

Paul was holding her hands in his. When they trembled, he tightened his grip on them but didn’t speak. He waited.

“Most of all I thought about what a seriously messed up woman I am. It’s like I have an animal caged inside me, and when it breaks out, I never know what it’s going to do.” She raised her eyes to his; she was crying. “It got out again last night. All I could think about was getting high. Then . . . I got scared—really, really scared.”

“Oh, baby.” He pulled her head to his shoulder, stroked her hair.

She let him hold her a few moments before pulling away. “That’s when I did a U-turn—and on the I-Five, the highway that never sleeps, that’s not easy—”

“Jesus.”

“I did a U-turn,” she repeated, “and 1 headed home.”

“You stopped at Camryn’s. Why?”

“I don’t know that, any more than why I was heading to that drug dealer.” She looked away. “I just did. I never intended to go in. I don’t know what I intended. My head was a jumble of wanting drugs, wanting Kylie . . . But while I was standing there, I remembered Holly and the one time we had any kind of conversation. It was about Camryn and how much she admired her for always being so strong, so caring. How she’d been there when Kylie was born.” Erin paused. “She said Camryn was the kind of person you’d trust with your life.”

Paul was getting it now, knew where Erin was heading. “And you’re not.”

She shook her head. “No. I want to be, but I’m not. And if I can’t trust myself, I can’t ask Kylie to do it either—or you.” She touched his face. “Kylie belongs with Camryn. It’s what Holly would want.”

“Are you saying—”

“I want you—us—to let go. Leave things as they are.”

“But I—” he felt he should protest because not to felt like a defeat of some kind, but she moved her hand to his mouth, covered it with her fingers.

“No ‘buts,’ darling. It’s the right thing to do.”

“She’s my blood, Erin. I won’t let her out of my life.”

“Somehow I don’t think that will surprise Camryn as much as you dropping the legal challenge. I’ll want to see her, too, as often as I can, and spoil her rotten when I do.” She hesitated. “That will be all right with Camryn, won’t it? My seeing her, I mean.”

“I’m sure it will be.”
And if it isn’t I’ll make sure it is.

She nodded and stood. He stood with her, and they locked hands. “Let’s go in, see that our granddaughter is asleep,” she said.

“And then?”

“We’ll make love.” She looked away, then back into his eyes. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, it has. A too-long time.” He leaned and brushed a kiss over her lips, and his body tightened, his heart kicked up its beat. It had been almost two months since they’d made love. Night after night of Erin wandering the house at night, battling her demons, as she’d called them, and in the process remote and untouchable.

She took his hand. “Then let’s not waste any more of it.”

Walking to the house, anticipating the warmth of his big bed with Erin in it, feeling renewed hope for the first time in months, Paul’s mood suddenly soured at the thought of seeing Delores.

But if the woman had something to say about that bastard Adam Dunn, he’d hear her out and then get rid of her. In the meantime she could cool her heels for a time—until he made his wife happy.

When Gina walked into Delores’s vast, overstuffed room, she saw her mother’s wheelchair sitting empty outside her bathroom door. The only illumination came from a bedside lamp and the rivulet of light seeping along the carpet from the half-open door. Steam formed a gauzy, shifting ghost above it. The sound of the shower gushed into the room, inharmonious with the soft strains of cello and violin coming from the stereo. The stereo sat under the lakeside window; its surface covered in newspapers, CDs, and bulbous African carvings. As with any room Delores spent any time in, it smelled of dead cigarettes and gardenia.

Delores’s African-themed suite, like the rest of her decorative efforts, was the usual sorry joke. A wooden giraffe, its brown and white mosaic coat barely visible under a long, uninterrupted fall of dust, took up most of what Delores called the “feature corner,” along with Ugandan goatskin drums, some bamboo stakes, and a series of solemn masks—bad copies, of course—set against a batik curtain.

There was another spot of light; a candle set into the back of a carved elephant flickered dully along the underbelly of the giraffe.