Once Upon A Killing (A Gass County Novel Book 2) (15 page)

With the smoothness of her hand she leisurely stroked the back of his head, his short hair scratched the inside of her palm. Eventually the strength of his hold around her loosened somewhat and her hand came to a complete stop through his dark strands of short hair. Her eyes found it hard to see if he was asleep in the shadows of the room, but she decided to move herself away from him, trying not to wake him up.

She sighed and decided using a toothbrush could wait until the following morning, and tried to close her eyes and find comfortable part of the pillow he slept half upon. But with jeans too tight, and a bra tugging into the softness of her flesh, she knew she wouldn’t get any rest until she had taken them off.

Without moving his arms, she tugged at her shirt and eventually got it up over her shoulders and in a rolled up ball tossed it aside on the floor, unhooked her bra, gave it the same treatment, and with the help of her feet scooted out of her jeans and tucked them in a pile at the end of the bed. When she turned to reach behind herself for another pillow his arms slowly came to life and pulled her tight against him once more. This time his face made sure to situate itself between her breasts, then his mouth released a slight sigh as he gave one of her breasts a slight peck and nuzzled his face back between the two.

“Really, Wayne, now?”

His head nodded in silence, but all she could feel was the scratch of his beard tingle sensitive spots across her breasts.

“Just stop moving around between them and everything should be fine. This is not the time for sex, okay?”

A few seconds went by and she placed herself comfortably in the bed with a pillow under her head, his arms locked in an unbreakable chain around her, his face still flanked by two ample breasts. Then she felt him move.

“Just let me cuddle you for a while. It definitely makes me think of other things than this evening’s event, and I’d rather have you on my mind than thinking of what tomorrow might bring. Just… let me play a little, take my mind off things.”

“Sounds like you’re using drugs.”

“If so, I’d like to be high on you all the time. These boobs have magical powers,” his mouth found her nipple and tasted it. “And tonight I’m going to let them win over me.” As his hands slowly caressed the skin of her naked back, his mouth found plentiful spots for his lips to wander. His mouth warmed her skin, making her breasts feel larger and heavier if possible, placing open mouthed kisses over each nipple, until his face grazed the gap between them again and at the end of her sigh he laid down to sleep.

Damn it
, she thought and cramped her thighs together,
now he made it impossible for me to fall asleep.

Chapter Twenty

“I’ve made an appointment this morning,” he coughed and looked down at his watch. “In thirty minutes I’ll see my doctor for a paternity test. Will you be okay here with her?” His head nodded slightly to the wall separating the kitchen from the living room, “or do you think it’s better if we rent her a room or something?”

Christine wrapped the robe she’d brought over a few weeks ago a bit tighter around herself, tying the red fleece fabric with a tight knot of the belt. “Will you be alright going to the doctor by yourself? If not, I’ll make sure she has somewhere to stay while I go with you.”

“No, I’d rather do this myself. I just wanted to ask to see if you’d be willing to hang with her until I come back, it probably won’t take long. I’m still on the fence if I believe this, and I’d prefer you to be somewhere around other people. Maybe take a trip into town, just don’t tell people who she might be. Please.”

“Right,” she answered and looked over his shoulder at the clock on the wall by the fireplace. ”I’ll figure something out. I might have to go into work though for a few hours.”

“Good idea, you can bring her over there, and if things get weird my buddies at the station aren’t too far away, and you might have customers coming in.”

“It sounds like you think she’s some kind of axe murderer instead of your possible daughter. Oh no, I’m sorry. Calm down, breathe, Wayne, breathe.” The moment her mouth had articulated the possibility of the young girl sitting on the other side of the wall being his long lost child, his eyes had grown larger than golf balls, his breathing slightly erratic, and to keep himself standing he grabbed hard at the kitchen counter and stared down on the floor between his hands. No vomiting was at least a plus.

“Just go,” she said softly, caressing his back growing wet from sweat pearling down his spine. “The faster you get this over with the quicker you get the results back. I got this covered for now. Just go, you have a ways to drive. Here are your keys.”

Through the window she watched him step into his truck, and then noticed him halt for a short second and look back over his shoulder and meet her eyes. “Just go,” she mouthed back through the glass and watched him back out of the drive way and continue down the road until the height of the hill had swallowed the sight of the car and she was alone in his house with the young stranger. A stranger they’d still welcomed into his house last night, not only to talk, but to stay until morning.

She’d been awake most of the night, cursing herself for convincing Wayne to let the guest sleep in the bedroom just down the hall. Sure, her backstory sounded convincing, and she knew things about young Wayne that only someone from his past would have known. If she wasn’t his daughter, at least she must have known Lucy very well. Well, enough to recite parts of Lucy and Wayne’s romantic past, scoot old photos of the young couple across the table last night, not to mention having Wayne’s old high school football team’s sweatshirt he’d let Lucy borrow one chilly evening when they’d just started dating. Her looks were those of her mother’s, not more than her eye color resembled Wayne.

But an axe murderer
, Christine thought,
that might have been an exaggerated idea. Could she be crazy? Sure, but she knew about crazy. She had many times been close to round that dark corner of turning mad, and sometimes she wasn’t quite sure if she was back from those sinister shadows herself.

*              *              *

“Hi.” The lock of the door clicked almost silently behind him as he stepped inside the entry hall, leaning against the door behind him as it shut.

“It’s late. I wanted to call to see how you were doing but I figured you needed some space. Mary is already asleep upstairs. So, how did things go, and forgive me for asking, but what on earth took you so long?” Christine’s hands grabbed harder around her robe, the exhaustion and stress of the day spreading goose bumps across her wrapped up body.

“The drive was long,” he said with a sigh and tossed his jacket on the closest chair in the hallway. “And I think I must have stopped at least three times at the side of the road going there, even ended up being a tad late. Thank God we live where we do, otherwise there would have been a very large amount of pissed off drivers behind me. I couldn’t even hold an average speed limit.” His words turned into another sigh and he shoved off his boots using just his feet, leaning against the wall. The dirt was clogged underneath the heavy soles and to save time and energy he left them in a pile on the floor, and moved passed Christine in the hallway until he reached the couch and fell backwards onto the fabric, engulfing him in warm comfort. His eyes were closed as she reached his side and sat down on the coffee table across from the couch.

“I know you’ve been drinking,” she said quietly. “Because the house smelled like nothing but whiskey and cigarette smoke as soon as you came inside. You should be lucky you didn’t have an accident on the road, or Brody cuffing you and taking your car away during one of his stakeouts along the highway. Wayne, you could have hit someone.”

A solemn nod was his lone answer, until he opened his bloodshot eyes and focused on something on the other side of the room.

“If I stopped three times on the way there, you can probably double that number going back home, with a bottle of whiskey tucked between my thighs while driving. My last stop got me out of the car to take a stroll down by the river bend, you know by the dirt parking lot among the trees, by Wilfred’s Creek. I downed the last of the bottle there, until it was a sliver of brown liquid at the bottom of that bottle, and then I threw it down in the water. Must have missed a step or two on the way back to the car, and before I knew it the ground came up and hit me in the face.”

“It’s been dark for a while now, Wayne, and you’ve been gone for,” she looked up at the clock on the wall, “sixteen hours.”

“I passed out. I remember seeing the sun starting to sink above the horizon, might have been around six o’clock or so. At least I’m here now, not that it would have bothered me to have slept in the dirt all night. No one comes around to that place anyway, except Brody.”

“And did he?”

His eyes closed once more and he took a deep breath, “Yes.”

“You mean that Officer Brody, your best pal, protector of the law, a stick so far up his ass it must be hard to walk, didn’t take you home, and let you drive in this condition without putting you in the slammer? I find that very hard to believe.”

“What time is it now?”

“Almost eleven-thirty. It’s almost midnight, Wayne.”

“That gave me about four or five hours to sober up somewhat, and have tons of coffee shoved down my throat. I’m not quite sure when he showed up at the parking lot. Maybe he saw my car and wondered what the hell I was doing. As I said, no one stops there anymore.”

“So, what happened? Your jacket is dirty, and you still smell like a whiskey factory line.”

That tugged his lips some, and a huff of a laugh slipped out from his nose, “I just remember someone pulling me up by the back of my jacket, dragging me a bit through the dirt until the fabric rubbed against the trunk of one of the large trees. I guess he tried to sit me up, somewhat. That bottle of whiskey sure made the world sound like living in a fish bowl, and it wasn’t until he squirted some ice-cold water into my face, and I even think he slapped me a few times, that he came into view. Gosh, you should have seen his scowl. You know, if he keeps that up, he’s gonna need Botox before he’s forty.”

“Wayne, that’s not funny. You could have killed someone, not just yourself.”

“I know, I know. I just couldn’t deal with the fact that I might have a child. Someone I didn’t see growing up, someone I didn’t ever know existed, someone who must have hated me through life and wondered why the hell I never showed up.” His hands ran down his face, leaving rosy cheeks that lingered.

“But it would have been impossible for you to know, unless you actually remembered all the women you’ve slept with, and the type of contraceptives you were using. You put your trust in those and hope to God it works, but sometimes these things will happen.”

“Somehow that doesn’t seem to calm my mind at all, Christine. I think I’m still jacked up on all the caffeine my body has withstood for the last few hours. Brody wasn’t even really that mad, imagine that?”

“It’s hard to imagine Brody without a scowling face or correcting pointers. What really happened when he found you?”

Wayne pushed himself up into a sitting position, and pulled Christine across the open gap spanning between the couch and the living room table until she found herself right next to him, leaning her head against his shoulder, his arm around her back. After a long sigh, he closed his eyes and recited the story to his best knowledge of how Brody had poured several bottles of cold water down his head, letting it wash over his face, clean off the sweat coating his neck, until he’d stomped back to his cruiser and gotten out the strong stuff he’d probably made in the morning. The hot coffee cup had warmed his hands, as the evening had chilled most of his senses, and not before long Brody had sunk down next to him just to wait him out.

“He must have known something was up, as the regular, normal me, usually only drank in bars during the weekends, just to pick up women easier.
Tonight
was not normal. We both knew it. After the first cup of coffee had made its way down, and reality seemed slightly more clear, I turned to Brody, still sitting next to me, eyes staring straight ahead, dead quiet, and told him straight out that I might be the father of a young teenager who’d shown up at my house the night before. I told him I just came from three towns away after doing a paternity test, and that I just needed to drink away reality for just a little bit,” Wayne shook his head and bit off a curse.

“Brody didn’t say much, just turned his head and looked at me, as if it was in his blood to scold me for being thoughtless when it comes to women, but he kept his mouth shut only to fill up my mug some more, until the thermos emptied out and I was able to stand and walk to my truck, parked next to Brody’s always shiny cruiser,” a smile crooked his lips and he breathed heavily.

“He might have mentioned he was only letting me go this time because of the circumstances, and that I only had a short way to drive home on a private road where he knew I wouldn’t meet anyone. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t say anything, but make sure you do this right,’ was the last thing that left his mouth before he sat down in his cruiser, turned on the headlights to brighten dusk, and was about to slam the door shut when I called back, ‘and because we’re best pals, right?’ But Brody just pulled on his seatbelt, closed the door, and rolled down his window. ‘Sure, but even so, I can’t go around giving people I know an easier way out. I’m supposed to follow, no actually
be
the law, in this town.’