On Pins and Needles (13 page)

She'd wanted his arms around her. She'd yearned for it. And yet even that yearning and the fantasies of what it might be like didn't compare to the reality.

His arms were strong and powerful, unyielding but gentle, surrounding her in the warm cocoon of his muscular body and making her feel removed from everything but the pleasure of being enveloped by him. Kissed by him.

And while a tiny voice some where in the back of her
mind said she should push him away, she slid her arms around him, too, filling her hands with the steely wall of his back.

His tongue began to tease her then. Just the tip. Running along the oh-so-sensitive bare inside of her lips and tickling her the way she'd wondered if her finger had tickled his palm. It almost made her laugh but instead she let her tongue meet his for some teasing of its own.

One of his hands floated up to the back of her head, cradling it as he pressed forward, as he parted his lips even farther and urged hers to part farther, too.

She obliged, thinking only about him now, about that kiss and how much she liked it. About how incredible it felt to be in his strong arms, to have her breasts against his chest, her nipples kerneling into the solid wall of his pectorals. Now
this
is un professional, she thought as it crossed her mind that they were in her office doorway, right on Center Street and in plain view of anyone and everyone within blocks.

But she didn't really care. She was too lost in that kiss, in those arms and that towering masculine body she craved to know even more intimately as desire ignited from the tiny sparks he'd lit the moment he'd closed his fist around her finger. Tiny sparks that had grown hotter with each increment of mouths opening wider and wider, with each thrust of his tongue, with each answering parry of hers, with each massage of his hand at her back when it was really her front that cried out for his touch…

Come back inside,
she willed him because she didn't want to say it. Saying it would mean she would have to end that kiss. She would have to lose the pure luxury of his mouth over hers, maybe even of his arms from around her.
Just come back inside….

But apparently they weren't on the same wave length when it came to that because rather than returning to the seclusion of the office's break room the way Megan was imagining, Josh began to rewind.

His tongue became less in sis tent, more playful, then re treated altogether. His mouth left hers, returning with only barely parted lips a time or two, before ending the kissing completely.

But he didn't let her go. He just dropped his chin to the top of her head and stayed that way for a time, breathing hot, sweet air into her hair.

“I hope this isn't how you say goodbye to all your acupuncture patients,” he joked after another moment, his voice husky enough to let her know he wasn't taking that kiss any more lightly than she was despite the fact that he'd called a halt to it when that was the last thing she'd wanted.

“I hope this isn't how you say goodbye to all the children of your prime suspects,” she countered.

“Only the pretty ones.”

She laughed at that, still wanting him to stay, to come back inside with her, to kiss her and hold her and touch her….

She heard him inhale, long and deep, feeling his lungs expand, bringing his chest and her breasts into even
closer contact for another moment before he exhaled and left her aching for more.

“I have to get out of here,” he said as if it was the last thing he wanted to do.

But then he took his arms away and clasped her shoulders in each big hand, bending to kiss the center of her forehead at her hairline before holding her in place while he took a step back, onto the board walk and let her go completely.

“See you in the morning,” he said, the hushed raspiness of his voice the only indication of what they'd just shared.

“See you in the morning,” she whispered because it was as much as she could summon.

He held up one index finger and touched her top lip with it, lingering for only a split second, and then yanking his hand to his chest as if it were the only way he was going to keep from taking hold of her and pulling her into his arms again.

And even as every nerve in her body shrieked for him to do just that, Megan watched him get into his car to go.

He started the engine and put it into gear, all with his eyes still on her. But he didn't move from his parking spot. Instead he went on staring at her as if he might not leave after all.

Then he held up one hand in a wave and finally backed onto Center Street, and Megan watched him drive off.

It was only after he had that she realized she was still
standing in her doorway, in her bare feet, with her toes curled to the sky.

She made herself turn and go back into the office. But as she did she couldn't help wondering if she really had learned her lesson with men.

It seemed as if every moment she spent with Josh—in spite of how hard she tried to fight it—only made her more vulnerable. Vulnerable to the attraction she had for him. Vulnerable to feelings that kept cropping up and getting stronger despite her attempt to restrain them. Vulnerable to desires that seemed to have a life of their own. Vulnerable to the man himself.

And that scared her.

Because clearly Josh Brimley was a man who might never be comfortable with anything but the tried and true.

A man who might never be comfortable with someone who didn't swim in the main stream.

With someone like her…

U
NTIL ABOUT THREE O'CLOCK
the next afternoon, Megan was worried that the trip to Cheyenne to canvas coin dealers was nothing more than a wild goose chase. If the coins had existed at all and been sold, Cheyenne was hardly the only place that transaction could have occurred even if it was the biggest city nearest to Elk Creek. And since she and Josh had a list of shops that stretched from one end of the city to the other in every direction and not any of the first eleven they visited had ever seen anything but pictures of gold doubloons, she didn't have a lot of confidence in their quest.

But just as both she and Josh were acknowledging that the trip might have been a waste of time, that if the coins had existed and anyone had sold them, they must have done it some where farther away from Elk Creek than Cheyenne, they hit pay dirt with store number twelve.

“Didn't buy 'em myself,” the shop owner said. He was an extremely tall, string-bean-skinny man with a head full of white hair. “Couldn't put out that kind of money
when I was just startin' and already had loans up to my eyeballs to get myself goin'. But I did broker the sale.”

“Eighteen years ago?” Josh said as if testing to make sure this fit the bill.

The shop owner pointed over his shoulder to the wall behind him where frames held licenses to operate. “That's how long I been in business. Eighteen years. Those doubloons were one of my first deals. Helped launch me.”

“Do you have records of the sale?” Josh asked.

“From eighteen years ago? Nooo. I only keep 'em as long as the tax man says I have to. Papers from that far back are history.”

“Do you remember the person or people who brought the coins in? A name? Anything?”

“Don't remember your name and you just told it to me. It's faces I'm good with. Never forget a face.”

Megan had a photograph of her parents in her wallet and she took it out to show the dealer. “Do either of these people look familiar?”

The man peered at the picture when Megan handed it to him, studying it closely. “Nah. Besides, the guy with the doubloons was older'n this all those years ago.” The dealer raised one finger then as light apparently dawned. “And he had a limp. I remember that now. Said it was a war injury. Don't know which war, though.”

“Would the person you sold the coins to have any more information on the seller?” Josh asked.

“They never met. I was the go-between, that's how I earned my part. I had the only contact with the owner of the doubloons and there wasn't much to even that.
He was in a hurry to sell, said he needed money fast, so I took care of it fast.”

“And there was nothing about it that struck you as suspicious?”

“No, sir. I always do it by the book so I know I made 'im show identification and sign off sayin' he was the rightful owner. If there'd of been anything suspicious about it I would have called in the authorities, but there must not of been.”

“And all that pa per work is gone?” Josh said as if hoping he hadn't heard it right the first time.

“Like I said.”

The coin dealer assured them that there was nothing more he could tell them. But Josh left him a business card just in case anything else came to mind and asked for one from the dealer, complete with his name, and his home address and phone number to go with the business information.

Then Josh and Megan left.

“So the dealer not only didn't recognize my parents, he's a witness to the fact that a man much older than my father sold the coins,” Megan said victoriously as they got into Josh's squad car in the parking lot beside the shop. “Now will you take my parents off the suspect list?”

“Not completely,” Josh answered as he started the engine, pulled out of his parking spot and then out of the lot.

“Why not completely?”

“Because it could have been Chaney himself who sold the coins and then was killed for the money,” Josh
said reasonably as he maneuvered through the traffic of downtown Cheyenne.

“I don't think so. If Chaney hadn't sold the coins before that, why would he have sold them then? I think he liked having the coins them selves. They made for a better story. And certainly they were easier to cart around with him and hide than a whole lot of cash would have been. Besides, why would he need money all of a sudden? He was a drifter and there was no indication that he was tired of that or wanted any other kind of life. My dad said that Chaney told him he was ready to move on and that Chaney was walking down the road as we drove off.”

“But anything your father says is suspect,” Josh pointed out. “Maybe Chaney had decided to settle down and was going to buy your place from your folks before you all left. And maybe, rather than selling it to him, they opted for getting rid of Chaney, taking the money and still hanging onto the property.”

“Because they're master-mind criminals,” Megan added facetiously. “You just won't give up on them, will you?”

Josh looked at her out of the corner of his striking blue eyes and smiled a smile that let her know he was enjoying the debate too much to concede.

But then he conceded anyway. If only slightly. “I'll admit this information expands the suspicion a little. Chaney's bones didn't indicate any reason he would have had a limp or anything that looked like an old war injury.”

“So you don't think whoever sold the coins was my father
or
Chaney.”

“Let's just say this sheds a new light on things. I want to check past medical records in town, see if there's anything about Chaney maybe spraining his ankle when he was in Elk Creek. That could account for a limp and he might have made up the war injury story just to seem interesting or maybe play on sympathies to get himself a better deal. At the very least we now have a couple things to look into that we didn't have before.”

“What else besides the medical records?”

“I can get access to the Defense Department's database through the Internet and find out if Chaney had a military record.”

“Okay. So if Chaney didn't have a medical record or a military record then it looks like he didn't sell the coins himself. We know my father didn't sell the coins, and if Chaney didn't have money for him to steal, then you have more reason to stop suspecting my folks of anything at all,” Megan concluded, again victoriously. “And if we head back to Elk Creek right now we can check both those things today.”

“I was thinking of buying you dinner in Cheyenne tonight. For a change.”

“Let's do this and I'll fix you dinner,” she said as a trade-off.

“Tofu salad and bean sprouts?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Whatever?” he repeated, adding innuendo to the single word.

“Just head for home and we'll negotiate that later,” she ordered.

But the excitement in her tone wasn't entirely due to the fact that she felt on the verge of clearing her parents' good name.

 

Dinner ended up being takeout from the only restaurant in Elk Creek besides the Dairy King—Margie Wilson's Café. Megan and Josh ate at Josh's desk in the sheriff's office after having failed to come up with any local medical records on Pete Chaney.

As they did, Josh searched the Defense Department's data bases while Megan did another job he hadn't yet had the time to get to—she placed calls to Nebraska trying to find any relatives Chaney might have had there.

It was late when they both finally finished and as Megan hung up the phone Josh stretched his long arms into the air, arched his back until it cracked and then propped his feet on the corner of the desk, crossing them at the ankles.

“No more,” he said as if crying uncle.

Megan agreed and rolled her head in a circle trying to ease the crick in her neck.

“What did you come up with?” she asked when the head-circles failed to help and she ended up looking at Josh across the desk.

“You show me yours and I'll show you mine,” he said, his expression a more mature—and in finitely more appealing—version of an ornery school boy.

He'd taken a break a few hours earlier and returned from his office bathroom free of the five o'clock shadow
that had roughened his jaw so he still looked neat and clean and smelled of that after shave that Megan liked more than she wanted to think about. His antique-oak-colored hair was too short to get mussed but it was somewhat more spiky on top from unconsciously dragging his hands through it the way she'd surreptitiously caught him doing a few times as he'd worked on the computer.

His uniform shirt seemed as fresh as it had been early that morning when he'd picked her up at home, but he'd rolled the sleeves to his elbows, exposing wrists and forearms that Megan found sexier than she would ever have believed possible. And, as always, just one glance at those blue eyes of his, at the sharp, masculine perfection of his features, and she found it more difficult than it should have been to think clearly.

But she worked at it, recalling that in his all-too-insinuating way he'd asked what she'd found out about Pete Chaney's connection with Nebraska.

“I called every Chaney listed in the current phone book,” she finally said. “But not one of them had ever heard of a Pete or a Peter Chaney.

“And none of them had any relatives that were unaccounted for. I also did what you told me and asked a Nebraska librarian to use the reverse directory to get the telephone number for the address on his expired driver's license. When I called the number the librarian gave me, the woman I spoke to said she'd lived in the house for the last fifteen years. She bought it from two elderly spinster sisters named Blanchard, and I couldn't contact them because they've both passed away.”

“So nothing.”

“So nothing. What about you?”

“I knew Chaney didn't have a criminal record in Wyoming but I'd put out a nation-wide inquiry and my answer was here when I turned on the computer. He came up clean all the way around. He did enlist in the army, but he went AWOL during boot camp and that's the last the army ever saw of him. But the information on his enlistment papers shows the same address as his driver's license and names no next of kin at all—which I guess pretty much jibes with your finding no Chaneys who knew or were related to him.”

“And that's it? Between the two of us all we found out was that Pete Chaney effectively disappeared long before he actually disappeared?”

“Looks like it. Well, that and that he didn't have anyone who cared if he disappeared and also didn't have a war injury—or any other injury to speak of—that might have made him limp. Plus I put in a call to Buzz Mar tin dale while you were washing your hands and he didn't recall Chaney having a limp either.”

“So it was someone else who sold the coin and my folks are off the hook,” Megan concluded.

“Let's just say they're a step closer to being off the hook. But there are still the possibilities we talked about before—your parents could have taken the coins and had a friend sell them, or Chaney could have had a friend sell them and your folks could have done him in for the money the friend brought back.”

Megan did a frustrated squeal. “You really just never give up, do you?”

Josh grinned at her and reminded in a confidential tone that lifted his chiseled chin, “The body was buried in their backyard. I can't just give up on them.”

Megan closed her eyes and shook her head. “Oh fine,” she muttered, too weary by then to argue the point anymore.

“Ready for another moratorium?” Josh asked, correctly reading her concession.

“For tonight I am.”

“Good. Me, too. Want to get some fresh air?”

They hadn't spent more than five minutes apart all day and evening yet anything that pro longed her time with him was welcome to Megan. Although she didn't want him to know that so she tried to keep her enthusiasm to a minimum.

“I'm not dressed for too much of the night air but a little would be nice,” she answered, referring to the brown cargo pants and matching V-neck sweater she wore, and the fact that despite it having been a particularly warm April day, the temperature outside was still not likely to be balmy.

“We'll run the car heater on the way and I'll keep you warm when we get to where I want to take you,” he promised.

“When we get to where you want to take me? That sounds interesting.”

“Might be. We'll just have to see. But one way or another I'll make sure you don't freeze to death.”

There was that promise again and she knew it was fraught with danger.

But it was also too tempting to pass up regardless of
how many red flags waved in Megan's mind to warn her that passing it up was exactly what she
should
do.

“Okay,” she heard herself say a little more eagerly than she intended.

“Great.”

Josh dropped his feet to the floor, shut down the computer and stood with what seemed like renewed energy. “Let's go then.”

On the way to the squad car parked along side the court house building they en countered a couple Josh stopped to introduce her to—Kate McDermot and her new husband Brady Brown.

When the amenities were complete, Josh extended his congratulations on the recent announcement of their pregnancy. That prompted Megan to ask to hold the other woman's hand.

“I'm nearly a hundred percent right in telling the sex if I touch the mother's hand,” Megan explained matter-of-factly to the three people in various stages of curiosity and amusement.

“Okay,” Kate McDermot agreed.

Megan clasped Kate's hand like any friend happy to see her and then let go again to pronounce, “It's a girl.”

“My doctor is betting on it being a boy from the speed of the heart beat,” Kate informed her.

“He's wrong,” Megan said with confidence, making them all laugh.