Mariah Stewart - Coming Home

“And now?”

“And now, what?”

“Do you still believe that? That if you met the right prince, you could live happily ever after?”

She looked at him as if he had three heads. “Are you crazy?” She snorted. “Do you still believe if you met the right ‘princess’ that you’d live happily ever after?”

“Actually, I do.”

“How can you say that when you just finished telling me that you think that possibly your wife only married you to protect herself from your brother?”

“Wrong princess.” He shrugged.

“Like I said, you are one really strange man.” She leaned back against the sofa, and he chuckled.

It had grown dark, and the streetlights outside had turned on. They sat in the dark for a while not talking, but he reached up and took one of her feet in his hands and rubbed the arch with his thumbs for a moment.

“I’ll give you until tomorrow morning to stop that,” she murmured.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you’ll have to start on the other foot.” She slipped down onto the floor next to him, then moved onto his lap. Straddling him, she took his face in her hands and kissed him, her tongue flicking the tip of his. They teased each other for a long moment, then he clasped the back of her head and filled her mouth with his probing tongue. She placed her hands on his shoulders and eased him back onto the floor and covered his body with hers. She grabbed a throw pillow from the sofa to slip under his head. She lowered her mouth to kiss him again and he repositioned her hips so that she could feel him hard against her. His hands slid under her shirt and tugged her bra down to release her breasts and she leaned up slightly to fill his hands with her softness. A soft moan escaped her parted lips, and she pulled her skirt up around her waist and sought his zipper, pulled it down to release him to her busy hands. When she lowered herself onto him, he groaned and pushed himself up into her to fill her. When his mouth found her breasts, she rose and fell above him, taking him along with her, on an ever-faster ride to oblivion.

“Oh my God,” she said when she could catch her breath. “I should have pulled those shades. I hope no one’s looking through the windows.”

“You mean, like the guy there on the front porch with the baseball cap?”

She started to turn to look, then realized he was teasing her. “Oh, you.” She swatted at him before snuggling down against his chest to listen to his heart beat.

“Ness?”

“Hmmmm?”

“We have to get up. My neck is breaking.”

“I gave you a pillow,” she murmured sleepily.

“It slid across the floor. I think it’s in the front hall now.”

“All right.” She sighed and reluctantly removed herself, sitting back against the sofa to reposition her clothes.

“Are you getting dressed?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t walk through the front hall and up the steps half naked, that’s why. And neither can you. If someone was walking by…”

“And happened to be staring through your windows, they might see something you don’t want them to see.” He laughed, but pulled his clothes on.

“Right.” She stood and reached a hand down to him. “Besides, we can take them off again when we get upstairs.”

“So, I guess this makes it a two,” he said when they reached the top of the steps.

“Two what?”

“A two-night stand.”

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”

“Well, sometimes, yes, I do.” He chuckled as they found their way across the darkened room.

“Guys say the dumbest things,” she muttered, and he laughed good-naturedly.

Later, she sat against the headboard, her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs, listening to him breathe and wondering what her life might have been like if either of her ex-husbands had been a man like Grady Shields.

ARE you sure you’re all right here by yourself?” Grady stood in Bling’s doorway and assessed the damage, which somehow, in daylight, looked even worse than it had on Saturday night.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” Vanessa moved through her shop with apparent determination. “Even if the person who did this was inclined to return, I doubt he’d do it on a bright sunny morning when half of the population of St. Dennis is looking for an excuse to be outside and strolling along Charles Street. And I will have the door locked.” She disappeared into the back room and emerged a minute later with an apron, which she slipped over her head and then tied around her waist. “I think I’ll start back here in the office, what do you think?”

“I think you should do what feels most natural to you. But are you sure you don’t want company?”

“I’m sure. I really want to get this over with. I want my inventory checked and I want the floors cleaned and I want my shop back. Besides, you have something to do. Aren’t you calling someone at the FBI about those fingerprints?”

“I need to check with Hal first to see if the prints they took on Saturday were submitted to IAFIS yet.”

“Tell me again what that means?” She disappeared through a curtain on the right, but came right back out again. “Well, at least the dressing rooms were spared. I thought some things might have been tossed around in there but there’s nothing.”

“IAFIS means ‘Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.’ It’s a database. Law enforcement agencies can submit fingerprints, which are cataloged. Then, when they have prints they’re hoping to match up, they’ll send them in and request a search. If the prints are on file, they’ll get a confirmation with the name and criminal history of the person to whom the prints belong.”

“So, if the person who broke in here the other night committed a crime before, and his prints are already on file there in that system, when Hal sends in the prints they took here, the FBI can tell him who that person is?”

“As long as the prints are already on file so there’s something to match to, yes.”

“But if they hadn’t committed a crime before, their prints wouldn’t be there?”

“Not necessarily. If the agency that arrested him the first time didn’t submit the prints, they wouldn’t be in the system. And there are prints in the system that were submitted for other reasons-employment background checks, firearms sales, that sort of thing. So it isn’t a definite, but maybe we’ll get lucky if this guy’s been arrested before and his prints were submitted and we’ll find out who he is.”

“Well, we can only hope.” She looked distracted, so he waved a hand in front of her face.

“I’m going to walk down to the police station and talk to Hal. You have my cell number if you need me.” He kissed her on the side of her mouth and smiled at her belated attempt to kiss him back. “I’ll let you make good on that one later,” he told her as he walked to the door. “Come on over here and lock this.”

She took the key from her pocket and walked him to the door. “Tell Hal I said good morning.”

“Will do.”

Grady left the cool of the shop and walked out onto a sunny weekday morning. There was little traffic at this hour-the school buses had collected and discharged their riders and the locals who had to be at their jobs before nine were already there. But there was still a good crowd in Cuppachino as he crossed the street, and he decided to stop in and pick up a cup of coffee to go.

He bought his takeout and was on his way to the counter where the sweeteners and creamers were located, when he heard someone calling his name. He turned to see Grace Sinclair waving to him.