Thread of Fear, page 13
part #1 of The Glass Sisters Series
Fiona swallowed a succulent bite. The meat was perfect, the cheese warm and gooey. The bun was homemade and toasted with just a hint of butter. It was the best burger she’d ever put in her mouth, but she didn’t want to interrupt Ginny by telling her so. She dabbed her lips with a napkin. “And John is…?”
“Jack’s daddy. Cotton farmer. He was a hardworking, hardheaded SOB, and Jack takes right after him. Takes after him in other ways, too. Got more than his fair share of good looks.” Ginny smiled, suddenly looking younger and less worn out. “But I bet you already noticed that, right?”
Jack spotted her at the back of the bar. She had an empty wineglass in front of her and looked to be deep in conversation with one of his mother’s best friends.
He sighed.
“They’ve been at it half an hour now,” Allyson said, wiping down a booth near the hostess stand. “But we just sat a big table, so you’d better tell Ginny to hustle it back to the kitchen before Ralph pitches a fit.”
Allyson cut another look at him and seemed to notice his jeans. “You off tonight? My brother’s having some people over to watch UT basketball, if you’re interested.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got plans.” Jack stripped off his jacket, trying not to make a puddle on the oak plank floor. It had started sleeting outside, and the roads were a mess. He predicted an injury accident by midnight.
He made his way to the back, nodding at friends and acquaintances wedged into booths. Kenny Chesney played on the jukebox, and a shout went up from the poolroom in back as someone sank a shot. He stopped at Fiona’s table.
“You bad-mouthing me again, Ginny?”
Ginny looked up, and her face went from surprised to guilty in about half a second.
Jack slid into the booth right beside Fiona, and she beamed at him.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.” Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “Ginny’s just filling me in on a little background info. I didn’t know you had a rabbit.”
Jack glared at Ginny. “I don’t.” He picked up Fiona’s fork and stole a bite of her pie.
Ginny tipped her head to the side and folded her arms over her chest.
“Great pie, Gin.” He took another bite. “Hey, Allyson wanted me to tell you you’re needed in the kitchen.”
She stood up and pretended to be in a huff. “Don’t you lie to this girl, Jack Bowman. She’s a smart one.” She bestowed a smile on Fiona. “Nice meeting you, hon. You come on by here again next time you’re in town.”
When she finally left, Jack gave Fiona a long, steady look. She had her elbow resting on the table and her cheeks were flushed, probably from the wine. Her suit jacket was crumpled up beside her, and she wore a cream-colored blouse that was a tad see-through.
“Good thing you decided to stay. The roads are bad tonight.” He draped an arm over the back of the booth and picked up a strand of hair that had come loose from her braid.
“I just stopped for dinner. I’m going back after this.”
Jack forked up another bite of pie. “What all did Ginny have to say?”
“Oh, not much. Just how you used to be a real big shot in high school.”
“Hmm.”
“And how you led your football team to the state championship. Very impressive.”
Fiona obviously didn’t know much about football. Jack’s team had been good, but Grainger High was only a 3A school, not exactly a powerhouse. That winning season was still well remembered around town, though. And his role as quarterback during the glory days had made him pretty popular. It was probably the reason the town council had overlooked his age when he’d applied for the chief-of-police job.
Jack stroked a finger down Fiona’s neck and wondered what else she’d heard about him. Knowing Ginny, it hadn’t all been good. “Don’t believe everything Ginny says. She has a tendency to stretch the truth.”
Fiona lifted an eyebrow.
“Get you a beer, Jack?”
He glanced up at Allyson. “I’ll have a Budweiser. And a piece of this pie. À la mode, please.”
Fiona scrunched up her nose. “Beer with pie?”
He looked down at her, resisting the urge to lean down and kiss that nose. “Sure, why not?”
She shook her head and reclaimed her fork. He watched her take a dainty bite, then run her tongue over the corner of her lip. Just sitting here watching her eat was getting to him. If he had any sense, he’d move to the other side of the booth and give her some space, but it had been a long, grueling day, and her hair smelled just a little too nice. So instead, he inched closer, brushing his thigh against her knee. She gazed up at him and sank her teeth into that plump bottom lip. He didn’t know for sure what she was thinking, but he could make a guess.
“Here you go.”
Jack dragged his gaze away from Fiona’s mouth and thanked Allyson for his order. The service sure as hell was prompt tonight.
When she was gone, Jack looked at Fiona. Her attention was fixed on her dessert, as if she didn’t want to look him in the eye. He dropped his hand under the table and touched her knee. Her skin felt warm and soft, and she wasn’t wearing the panty hose he could have sworn she’d had on earlier. Either she’d taken them off someplace, or her legs were naturally smooth.
“You’ve been drinking,” he murmured, and slid his hand around to the inside of her thigh. “How much wine have you had?”
She shot him a glare and pushed his hand away. “One glass. I’ve got to get on the road.”
“I’m thinking you should stay here. We can get you a room.” He laced his fingers through hers and rested their hands on his lap. She gazed up at him, and the color in her cheeks deepened.
“Hey there, J.B.”
Carlos stopped at the table. If Jack could have killed a man with his thoughts, he’d have done it right then and there.
“What’s up, Carlos?”
His deputy squeezed right on into the booth, and Jack clenched his teeth. There was no such thing as privacy in this town.
“Ma’am.” Carlos gave Fiona a nod. “Sorry to interrupt, J.B., but I talked to my cousin over in the sheriff’s office.”
“And?”
“And the raid went down at four o’clock. TV guys got a tip-off to be on standby, just like you thought, so that’s how come they got footage of Randy making the collars.”
Fiona tugged her hand away, and Jack realized he’d been gripping it.
“Sharon’s still at the station,” Carlos continued. “She went ahead and faxed out the sketch to all the news people who missed the press conference.”
“Which is pretty much everyone,” Jack said.
“Lowell volunteered to work a double shift, covering phones. But so far, not much response. Just a few crazies who called to say it’s their relative back from the dead or some bull.”
“That happens a lot,” Fiona put in. “And it only gets worse once the sketch really gets into circulation. Still, you never know when the call you need will come in.”
“When it does, we’ll be ready,” Carlos assured her. He eyed the pie, and Jack pulled it closer and took a hefty bite to make his point. Carlos was coming off an extended dinner break, and Jack hadn’t eaten all day.
Fiona picked up her jacket and purse. “Will you excuse me, please?”
Jack frowned. “Where you going?”
“I need to use the restroom,” she said, and he knew she just wanted an excuse to get up. But he scooted out of the booth anyway and watched her walk past the poolroom to the very far back.
“You coming in tonight, Chief?”
Jack sat back down. “Maybe. Late.”
Carlos stared at him, knowing exactly what he was up to.
Shit, so what? Jack had been working round the clock since this case had come in. He’d barely eaten. He’d barely slept. His only breaks had been driving his ass all the way to Austin to hire a forensic artist, and as far as relaxation went, that sure as hell didn’t qualify. Jack was so tightly wound right now, he was about to snap, and his frustrated libido wasn’t helping. He needed some relief, and he’d already decided the form he wanted it to take.
Carlos was still staring at him, probably hoping to guilt him into coming in.
“You’ve got me on call,” Jack said. “If something comes up, I’m there before you can blink.”
“I know it, J.B.”
“Then what’s with the look?”
“I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like a man who’s thinking with his palo.”
Fiona splashed water on her cheeks and stared at her reflection. What was she doing here? She should be home right now, preparing for her art show in the soothing comfort of her loft apartment. Instead, she was in Podunk, Texas, in the cramped bathroom of some redneck bar fighting off an alarming attack of lust.
Jack Bowman wanted to sleep with her. He wanted to check her into some seedy motel and set her world on fire.
And he could do it, too. Whenever he touched her, whenever he so much as looked at her with those intense blue eyes, she started smoldering inside.
It was just sex. It would be raw and physical and probably just what she needed to wake her up from the frigid state she’d been in ever since she’d walked in on Aaron and that groupie from the Continental Club. The instant she’d seen them together, a frost had settled over her sex drive.
But Jack had melted it. It had happened the moment she noticed him watching her from across her lecture hall. He’d stood there in the shadows, leaned up against the wall, looking dangerous and determined and much too cocky. Just the type of man she made a habit of falling for.
But she wouldn’t fall for Jack. It would just be sex.
She heard the toilet flush and straightened away from the mirror. She adjusted the lapels of her tailored jacket and smoothed her skirt. She dabbed away the mascara smudges under her eyes and tidied her hair.
The woman at the sink beside her wore tight black Wranglers and a low-cut sweater. She opened a tube of lipstick and smiled at Fiona in the glass. The twang of country guitar music came through the thin paneled walls.
“They’re crowded tonight,” Fiona said, wondering why she felt compelled to make small talk with a complete stranger.
The woman blotted her lips on a tissue and smiled. “Five-dollar pitchers every Thursday. Ralph always gets a crowd.” She winked at Fiona, and squeezed past her and out of the restroom.
When she was gone, Fiona looked at herself again. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t fit in with these people who were open and friendly and lived on farms and drank beer.
But then again, maybe she was being a snob. Or being too uptight. Courtney was always telling her she needed to lighten up and let herself have fun.
I’m thinking you should stay here. We can get you a room.
A room. At a cheap motel. Funny how he hadn’t asked her back to his house, to the little two-one he lived in not far from the Bowman homestead and his widowed mother. He hadn’t asked her to meet his sisters, both schoolteachers, or his nieces and nephews, or in any way to enter his life.
What he’d asked for, she realized, wasn’t so different from what Hoyt had asked for. You look like a lady who knows her way around a stick. What say we shoot some pool later?
Jack wanted sex. And she did, too. But if she slept with him, where would it get her? Nathan would hear about it for sure. And in no time she’d go from being a respected APD consultant to a locker-room joke. It had happened before. Law enforcement was a boys’ club. As a woman, Fiona had to work ten times harder than the men just to be taken seriously as an artist, to build a reputation as a professional. And that hard-earned reputation could vanish in a heartbeat if she took her clothes off for the wrong guy.
She should drive back to Austin.
Fiona yanked open the door to the hallway and walked past the poolroom. The corridor was dim, and she nearly missed the dark figure lurking in the alcove beside the pay phone.
“I was beginning to think you fell in.”
Her heart lurched as he emerged from the shadows. The neon sign on the wall cast his face in a bluish light. His strong features looked even more dramatic than usual—the cheekbones, the lips, the prominent chin. She had to get out of here.
She glanced at her watch. “I really need to—”
“Oh, no you don’t.” He took her hand and pulled her into another alcove, this one stacked with boxes and metal kegs.
“You’re trying to flee the scene again,” he said, easing her back against the wall with his body. His gaze dropped to her mouth.
“Jack. Please.”
He smiled slightly. “So polite.” He cuffed her wrists and pinned them to the wall beside her shoulders. She gazed up at him and felt his breath warm against her forehead. He smelled like rain and beer and woodsy aftershave, and she missed being this close to a man, missed it so much she ached. And he must have read what she was thinking, because he kissed her.
She should have known he’d dive right in. That he’d take control of everything and that he wouldn’t ease back until he’d completely dragged her under. She heard the din of the crowd, the thrum of the jukebox. The wall at her back seemed to vibrate, and Jack pressed her against it, pinning her with the weight of his body, making her dizzy with the force and the heat and the taste of him. His hand slid down over her thigh and tugged at the hem of her skirt. And that’s when she realized her own hands were free, no longer trapped against the wall, but draped limply on his shoulders.
He moved his mouth to her neck and said something against her throat.
“Hmm?”
“Peaches,” he muttered. “You smell like peaches.”
She lifted one knee, frustrated by the confines of her skirt, and those strong fingers moved to help her, jerking the fabric up even farther and hitching her leg up to rest at his hip. His jeans rasped against her skin as she moved against him.
“You’re burning up,” he said. “I swear to God, you’re so hot.”
She felt hot. And feverish and nearly hurting with the need to get him closer. He sucked on the sensitive skin just below her ear, and she felt the pull deep in her body. She wanted him right now, right this very second.
God, what was wrong with her? They were in a bar.
“We’re in a bar,” she whispered.
His mouth moved back over hers, and for a moment, she forgot everything but his wonderful, avid tongue.
Crack! The sound of pool and people snapped her back.
“Jack.” She turned her head away, and watched, horrified, as bar patrons filed back and forth in the hallway. Could they see them in here? They were deep in the shadows, but still.
Jack’s hand glided up to her breast and his pelvis rocked against her.
“Jack!” she hissed. “Jack, we need to stop.”
He stopped, his palm cradling her breast, his thumb poised just above her nipple. He seemed to recover his sanity, and he eased away from her, letting her knee drop down.
“We have to get out of here.” She pulled her skirt down and stabbed her foot around, searching for her shoe. It must have fallen off when she’d wrapped her leg around him.
God, what was she thinking?
He laced his fingers together behind her neck and looked down at her. “Go next door.” His voice sounded hoarse. “Get the same room as last time. I’ll be right over as soon as I clear the bill.”
She stared at him in the dimness, at the hungry, impatient look in his eyes. No one had ever looked at her like that, like if he didn’t have her in the next minute, he’d simply combust. That was how she felt, too.
“Hurry.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed him. “If I think about this for long, I’ll lose my nerve.”
CHAPTER 9
The air outside Becker’s felt cold, doubly so because her skin was already damp with sweat. The bar had been warm. She’d been overheated all through dinner, and Jack hadn’t helped matters when he’d slid up beside her and started copping a feel beneath the table.
She glanced across the parking lot to the run-down motel next door. If their sign was any indicator, they had a vacancy. If their parking was any indicator, they had way more than one. And Fiona was about to walk into the front office and request Room 22, where she’d stayed last time and where tonight she intended to have scorching hot sex with a man she barely knew.
Well, she sort of knew him. He’d become less of a stranger after her talk with Ginny. But she still didn’t really know him, and given the geography and everything else between them, she didn’t realistically expect that to change. Maybe that was why this felt so exciting. Her lips were still swollen from his mouth, and her skin tingled.
Her foot sank into a pothole, and she yelped as freezing water filled her shoe. She braced her hand against a truck so she could take off her pump and shake it out.
“Fee-yo-na.”
She whirled around. Hoyt stood beside the Dumpster at the edge of the lot. He wore the familiar camo hat and a jacket, and it looked as though he’d stepped out for a smoke.
Or had he followed her out?
“Hi, Hoyt,” she said, feigning comfort she didn’t feel.
He tossed his cigarette away and walked toward her, and she noticed he wasn’t very steady on his feet. Fiona resumed her path down the row of trucks, wishing she could remember for sure where she’d parked.
“You promised me a game of pool.” He caught up to her, and she darted her gaze around for any sign of Jack.
“We’ll have to do it next time,” she said, walking faster. She spotted the bumper of her little white car just up ahead.
“Hey!” He gripped her elbow, hard, and panic zinged through her. He jerked her close to him. “I’m talking to you.”
God, he was drunk. And angry. And they were alone in a sea of pickups.
“Okay, you win.” She forced a smile, although her heart was pounding furiously. “Let’s go back inside. You can break.”
He clenched her arm tighter, and she smelled beer and tobacco.
