LITMIR.BIZ

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him into focus.

      Odd place for a nap, she remembered thinking. Odd time.

      Then she’d become aware of the stain on the carpet. And the fire poker in her hand.

      “What else did the good detective tell you?” Lance had been a prosecutor with the D.A.’s office; she knew how weak her story sounded. Murder was rarely random or anonymous. Spouses almost always topped the list of suspects.

      “Did he tell you they don’t believe me when I say I have no idea what happened? That they don’t believe the gash on my head isn’t self-inflicted? Did they tell you that?”

      Dylan frowned. “Not in so many words.”

      But she didn’t need words. Everything Dylan St. Croix believed, felt, wanted, burned in that dark primeval gaze. He was a man driven by the kind of searing passion that incinerated everything in its path. Her included. Her especially. That he stood there now, so ominously still, so silent and expressionless, chilled in ways she didn’t understand.

      “I can see it in their eyes,” she whispered, “just like I see it in yours.”

      “It’s a logical assumption.”

      In another lifetime, she might have laughed. Logic and Dylan went together as well as fire and ice.

      Needing to breathe without drawing in sandalwood, she turned and walked to the edge of the pool, where an empty blue raft floated near the waterfall.

      “I came home and walked inside,” she said, looking out over the pool. In the distance, jagged mountain peaks blended into sky, only the faint stars indicating where one world ended and another began.

      “Someone grabbed me. I screamed, but…everything went dark.” She lifted a hand to the back of her head, where a nasty knot throbbed. “When I came to, I was in the living room next to Lance. He was…” A sob lodged in her throat. “The blood…There was nothing I could do.”

      She stiffened when she felt a warm hand join hers at the base of her scalp. She hadn’t even heard him approach. He circled the injury, making her acutely aware of his fingers in her tangled hair, gently exploring the wound the detectives wondered if she’d given herself.

      “Does it hurt?”

      “Not anymore.” Liar.

      Somewhere along the line, the birds had stopped singing. There was only the sound of cascading water and the hum of activity inside the house. The sound of their breathing. The crazy desire to lean back, to feel the solid strength of a hard male body.

      “When did you change into your negligee, before or after?”

      Cool evening air swirled around her bare legs, reminding her that beneath her robe, she wore only a white silk chemise. One she hated. One she’d never worn, though Lance had bought it for her over a year before.

      “I—I didn’t put it on,” she said, stepping from Dylan and tightening her sash. “I was wearing a suit. It’s hanging in the closet now.”

      “What was Lance doing here? I didn’t think you two were even speaking. Had something changed?”

      “No.” No way. Their marriage had ended long before he had walked out the door, long before she took a drive one deceptively beautiful afternoon. Long before she learned truths that violated everything she’d ever believed.

      “Then why was he here?”

      “He called and said he had a few things to pick up, wanted to know when I’d be home. He sounded…strange.”

      “Strange how?”

      “Just…strange. Upset.” Very unLancelike.

      “And?”

      “And nothing.”

      Dylan swore softly. “Don’t hold back from me,” he said, turning her to face him. Inches separated their bodies, their faces, years their hearts. “I’m a private investigator, for God’s sakes. I make a living finding what people don’t want me to know. And I see secrets in your eyes. What, damn it? What are you hiding? Are you afraid? Is that it?”

      Deep inside, she started to shake. He was too close. Much, much too close. The mere sight of him ripped her up in ways she hadn’t known were possible, resurrected feelings and desires and dangers she’d tried to bury.

      She didn’t want to see him now.

      She didn’t want to see him ever, ever again.

      “I came home to find Lance dead and the police think I did it. I had blood on my hands. How do you expect me to feel?”

      Dylan frowned. “I learned a long time ago not to have expectations when it comes to your feelings. Still waters run too deep for me. Too cold.”

      She angled her chin. “Only because you can’t muddy them.”

      “This isn’t about me!” he practically roared. He took her shoulders and pulled her closer, forcing her to tilt her head to see his eyes. “This isn’t about us or what happened on the mountain. It’s about what went down in this house a few hours ago. It’s about you. It’s about a whole hell of a lot of questions, and too few answers.”

      A hard, broken sound tore from her throat. “You think I don’t know that?” she tried not to cry. The wind whipped up, sending tangled strands of hair into her face. Agitated, she lifted a hand to push them back, but Dylan did the same. Their fingers met against her cheekbone, hers cold, his thick and hot. She closed her eyes briefly, but the sound of a vicious curse shattered the moment. Heart pounding, she looked up just in time to see hot fury erupt in Dylan’s eyes.

      It was the only warning she got.

      Chapter 2

      Something inside Dylan snapped.

      He stared at Bethany’s wrists, at the smears of blue and black circling pale flesh like violent bracelets. She said she’d been hit on the head and the gash there bore testimony to her claim, but clearly she’d been grabbed by the wrists, as well. Grabbed hard. Crushed with more than casual force.

      The picture formed before he could stop it, heinous, damning. Bethany as a cold-blooded murderer he couldn’t see. But crimes of passion required neither forethought, nor intent. They simply exploded, destroying everything in their path.

      Dylan knew that well.

      “Did he do this to you?” he demanded, taking her cold hands and turning them palm up. Deep, crescent-shaped gouges in the fleshy part of her palm told him just how tight she was holding on. The discolored thumbprints on the inside of her wrists turned his blood to ice. “Did he hurt you?”

      She gazed up at him, her eyes cloudy and confused, her mouth slightly open. She looked lost and alone standing there in nothing but the pale silk robe, like she’d just rolled from bed and found that while she slept, the whole world had slipped away.

      “W-what?”

      The thought of anyone getting rough with her, hurting her, chased everything else to the background.

      “Lance. Did Lance put these bruises around your wrists?”

      Slowly, she looked down, as though just now noticing the discoloration. But she said nothing.

      His mind worked fast, reenacting the crime with a brutal precision learned from years as a private investigator. He could almost hear Lance and Bethany arguing, the elevated voices, the desperation. Hear her telling him to leave. See his cousin grabbing her wrists and squeezing. Hurting.

      “Bethany.” His voice broke on her name. “Did Lance do this to you?” Tell me no, he thought savagely. Tell me no!

      She blinked at him. “Would you care if he did?”

      Once, he would have killed. “Answer me, damn it!”

      “Let go.” The words

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