Leslie Parrish - Fade To Black

“He’s seven.”

“Custody?”

“Not even standard. I get to take him to play at Mc-Donald’s every Wednesday night, and he sleeps on a futon at my apartment one weekend a month.”

Wow. Less than standard, indeed. Thinking about it, she quickly realized a possible reason. “Is it because of the job?”

His eyes widened, the sun bringing a gleam to the brown depths, revealing a glint of emotion, either at the unfairness of his situation, or the fact that she’d figured it out so quickly. Or both. Then he moved again, into a pool of shadow cast by a towering overhead tree, and glanced away. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“Look, I know it probably doesn’t help, but honestly, I’d much rather have had a part-time mom than none at all at that age. I know it isn’t enough, but the time you spend with him is really important.”

He fell silent and Stacey instantly regretted the words. She wasn’t one of those people who always brought every conversation back to herself. In fact, she couldn’t stand those types. Yet that was exactly what she’d done: taken his sadness over a recent divorce and how it affected his son and related it to her own childhood drama.

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No,” he replied, watching her, quiet and contemplative. “Actually, you’re right.”

Stacey realized they’d taken a step forward. They were no longer near-strangers sharing an unexpected attraction. They’d first spoken less than forty-eight hours ago, yet they’d already reached a crossroads in their relationship, where secrets were revealed and hurts shown. And they’d passed it.

In the silence of the morning, where even the birds were too heat-exhausted to chirp, their stares locked. Words clamored to escape her throat-an invitation to dinner, to have a drink, to grab a beer later.

“Guess we should get back to it,” he muttered before she could say anything.

“Sure.”

He glanced at his watch. “Might be a good time to check in with the others first, though. See if they’ve found anything.”

If they had, she probably would have heard the shouts of her own men from their search quadrant a quarter mile away. But she didn’t point that out.

“I could use a water break, anyway,” she said.

Taggert lifted his radio and got a brief report from Special Agent Stokes, leaving Stacey a moment to pull herself back together. And to remind herself of all the reasons she should not be letting herself grow more interested in this particular FBI agent.

He lived a dangerous life, worked a dark and bloody job. He was fresh off a divorce, a single father. He lived in a world she’d intentionally left behind when she’d moved back here from Roanoke.

But none of those things chased away the interest, the pure, electric attraction she felt for the man whenever she looked at him. Instead, she kept going over what she already knew about him, what she already liked about him.

He was strong and determined. Stubborn, even. Like her.

He was good at his job, wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of doing it to the best of his abilities. Also like her.

He was smart. Intuitive. And deep down, beneath all the gruffness and the swagger, he had both a sense of humor and a genuine warmth. The latter appeared at the oddest of times, like when he’d tossed her that gum, when he’d tried to prevent her from watching the video of Lisa’s death. Even now, when he’d genuinely appreciated the comment she’d made about his son.

Oh, yes, Dean Taggert had more depth than she’d first imagined.

And aside from all that, he was incredibly masculine, incredibly tough… incredibly big. Incredibly sexy .

That last one doomed her. Because despite resenting the darkness he’d brought into her safe, secure, nice world, she couldn’t deny she wanted him. That was all, just plain wanted to go to bed with him.

It had been a long time since she’d been so aware of a man. Longer since she’d been so aware of herself as a woman. That it should happen now, in the midst of this horrific case, confused her more. Not two minutes ago, in the middle of this nightmare, she’d had one of the most intimate conversations she’d had with a man in years.

No doubt about it, working with Taggert was messing with her head, putting strange ideas in it at the strangest of times. She’d found her stare tugged back to him time and again this morning, watching the way his white dress shirt grew damp with sweat and molded itself against his thick chest and muscular arms.

Unlike his boss, Taggert looked as though he knew how to get down and dirty. Despite the clothes she’d harassed him about, he seemed more than ready for some rugged action with that powerful body and that rock-hard determination in his jaw.

Get over it already .

She had to get over it. Because she needed to work with the man. Taggert was leading this investigation, and he was desperate to solve it. He hadn’t told her the whole story, but she knew enough to know they were working against a clock here. This killer could be stalking his next victim right now. The thought that he could be someone she knew, someone she’d interacted with here in Hope Valley, made her stomach heave.

Anything she could do to help, she would. That included setting aside her response to the man and being one of seven people sifting through hundreds of acres of woods, looking for evidence that had probably been washed away months ago.

Utterly futile, perhaps. But she owed it to Winnie. And to Lisa.

By three p.m., Dean was beginning to regret not bringing the shorts he’d mentioned to Stacey. Heat radiated from each molecule of air, baking and assaulting the senses. His clothes clung to every inch of him, and his eyes had glazed over. His sunglasses didn’t help; they merely steamed up, so he’d shoved them into his pocket early this morning and hadn’t touched them since. If he had to inhale one more mouthful of hot, pine-scented air, dry and redolent with the must of decaying trees and ancient dead leaves, he was gonna gag.

The great outdoors. Give him the D.C. Metro during rush hour any day.

“Nothing,” he muttered. “Absolutely nothing.” The three teams scouring the perimeter of the fence hadn’t turned up anything other than the remnants of an old, illegal campfire and a few crushed beer cans, there for a month at most.

“We’ve still got a lot to cover,” Stacey reminded him.As if he needed reminding. With only seven of them working, this was shaping up to be a weeklong project. They’d expected to have more help with Brandon and Lily, but Wyatt had kept them in the city for today. Another auction could be taking place at any time, and the IT experts would be more valuable trying to track it than searching for the bloody needle in this forest-wide haystack.

“I know, but we’ve got to be thorough.”

He’d seriously considered doing a trade-off when they’d all broken for a quick lunch: letting Stacey partner up with one of her men, leaving him with just about anybody else. Because despite the fact that he liked working with her, those moments this morning when things had gotten a little on the personal side had been a bonehead move.

He had no time to get personal. No interest in getting personal. No room in his life for anything resembling personal.

Right?

Keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll start to believe it.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to hear himself say that when his head was filled with nothing but her words: We both know there’s something here .

God, she was so direct, one more thing he really liked about her. That and the way her sarcastic sense of humor emerged every once in a while. The things he knew about the woman-the details she’d let slip-only made him want to know more. And despite the way she’d answered his question the previous night, he suspected he understood what she was doing here in small-town Hell Valley.