Carla Neggers - The Carriage House

"You?"

"Hasn't that crossed your mind?"

It had. He could see it had. But she only gave a curt nod.

"I have to go home. I can't leave Dolly-"

"I know."

He touched a moist spot on her lower lip. "Maybe you shouldn't stay here alone."

"No. I'll be fine."

"You can drive up north with me-"

"I have work to do," she said quietly, "and I need to think."

He let his fingers skim up her jaw, into her hair. But he didn't look at her. "Ike was in love with my wife."

"I know."

"I think she might have been a little in love with him. They didn't act on it."

"He was difficult in a lot of ways," Tess said, "but he wasn't a scoundrel."

Andrew bit back a sudden, totally unexpected smile. "Scoundrel? What kind of word is that?"

"It's a perfectly good word! Scoundrel. It sounds like what it means."

"So does kiss," he said, looking at her now, her eyes shining, warm. "Kiss. Say it. It sounds like what it means."

"Kiss."

And his mouth found hers, still cool from the water. She sank against the counter, her hand catching him at the side, her fingers digging in lightly. He could feel her pulse jump. Something about him got to her. He knew it, had sensed it almost from the moment they'd met. And her. He'd thought about kissing her when she'd looked up at him from the lilacs after she'd sent Dolly home. But he didn't believe in destiny, hadn't in a long time.

He threaded his fingers into her hair and eased them down the back of her neck, the skin soft, warm, smooth. If he didn't pull back soon, he didn't know if he'd be able to.

"Next time you're in a barroom brawl," he whispered, "throw the furniture with a purpose. Don't just slam it around. That just inflames the situation."

"Maybe that's what I was trying to do." Her eyes had taken on some of the grayness of dusk, her mouth still very close to his. "Inflame you."

They kissed again, harder, deeper, longer. He pressed her up against the counter, drew her thighs around him. Route One and the trip north seemed a million miles away, and he didn't give a damn about Ike Grantham.

"He wasn't in love with me," Tess said, almost as if she'd reached inside his mind.

He knew she meant Ike. "It doesn't matter."

"He wasn't. "

Andrew eased back, taking in the shape of her mouth, the way her shirt was wrinkled, askew. It would have been so easy to carry her into the bedroom. "We've been talking about him in the past tense."

She nodded, straightening, tucking in her shirt. "I noticed. It's because he's been gone so long."

"Tess."

"I can't think it was him I saw-his remains." She grabbed her glass and refilled it with water from the tap, her back to him. "It's okay. You can go. I'll be fine here."

"You could call your father or Davey-"

"Just what I need." She turned back, leaning against the counter with her glass of water. "There's one thing you should know. About what Davey said."

Andrew smiled. "After he plucked you off of me?"

"It was a mistake, throwing his beer at you. I should have grabbed someone else's. And yes, that bit about me not going quietly or slowly, whatever that was. It's bullshit."

"Ah."

"It is. Davey doesn't know anything about love or women."

"He knows you."

She snorted in half-feigned disgust. "He does not! He and my father are so old-fashioned-they hate it that I live on Beacon Hill. They think I should go back to a corporate job with a steady paycheck and benefits. Graphic design makes no sense at all to them." She drank some of her water, then pressed the glass to her cheek, and he figured she was hot. Liked it that she was. "Pop's worried owning a carriage house is a message to men that I've given up on the idea of marriage."

"Have you?"

"What? Now you sound like them! My point is, Davey doesn't know anything."

Andrew winked at her. "But he knows how to unstop a toilet."

She groaned.

"Call a friend. Call Susanna Galway. Tess, if someone did steal a skeleton out of your cellar-"

"Then you need to be home with Princess Dolly. Go. If I get spooked, I'll call Susanna." She shoved him toward the door. "Six-year-olds come before a woman who barely an hour ago wanted to hit you over the head with a beer bottle."

"And five minutes ago wanted to jump into bed with me?"

Her breath caught, her eyes sparkling. There was no denying what they both knew to be true, and she didn't even try. "All the more reason to hit the road."

Andrew did so two minutes later, merging with Beacon Street traffic, noticing that night had come and the air had turned cooler. He drove back onto Beacon Hill.

The drapes on her windows were pulled, her lights on, no one out on her quiet street. He knew he had to leave her, that whether she called her family or friends, or got in her car and came north, was her choice to make. He thought about going back in there, packing her up and stuffing her in his truck- and when they got to Beacon-by-the-Sea, to hell with his guest room.

But that wasn't his call. Not tonight.

Tonight, his call was to go home to his daughter.

There was something about driving around with her dead brother in her trunk that Lauren rather liked. She glanced back at her car parked in front of Andrew's house and felt a terrible thrill. She knew it was sick. But it wasn't as if the bones she'd collected the other night were Ike, his essence, his soul. That part of him was in another place. A better place. She truly believed that.

What was left-it all depended on how she wanted to look at it. DNA. Material for forensic scientists. Evidence for the police. A problem for her husband and his sponsors at the Pentagon, because, of course, the wife of Dr. Richard Montague couldn't be someone who had bones in her trunk, no matter how innocent her motives.

It was her brother. She was the only family Ike had left. She could decide whether his death was something that needed to destroy other people's lives. He'd trust her to make that decision.

"My brother," she whispered to herself as she mounted the front-porch steps. She'd worn a lavender cashmere sweater today, although she could have gotten away with something lighter. But it was cool and damp out on the point, surprisingly still.

Inside the house, Lauren could hear Dolly Thorne running, yelling excitedly, "Lauren's here! Lauren's here!" In a moment, she was at the screen door, waving, even as Harley Beckett materialized behind her. Dolly jumped up and down. She was wearing a crown of glow-in-the-dark planets and stars. "Do you want to see Tippy Tail's kittens?"

Harl opened the door a crack. "What's up?"

"Nothing. I stopped by to see Andrew."

"Not here."

"I see." Even under the best of circumstances, Harl wasn't a great conversationalist. Lauren used to be intimidated by him, but she'd finally told herself that a man capable of restoring an eighteenth-century chair to its original beauty couldn't be that awful, no matter how surly or how many times he'd been shot. She smiled at him. "Well, I have a little present for Dolly."

Harl didn't like that. His eyes flickered with disapproval, but Dolly pushed open the door and shot out onto the porch. "A present for me?"

"It's just a little present. I made it myself." She'd glued multicolored sparkles to a bamboo plant stake, handed it to Dolly with a flourish. "I thought a princess might need a magic wand."

"Ooooooh! It's beautiful. " Dolly whipped it around, more like a sword than a magic wand. "Harl, look!"

"What do you say?"

She smiled up at Lauren. "Thank you, Mrs. Montague."

"You're very welcome."

"Do you want to adopt one of Tippy Tail's kittens? Harl says they all have to go to new homes."