The Smoky Mountain Mist (14 page)

“So what did Agent Brand ask you do to, where I’m concerned?”

“Just keep an eye on you.”

“Is that why you were on the spot to help me at Purgatory Bridge?”

He shook his head. “That was dumb luck. I was just heading to Smoky Joe’s for a good time.”

“And ended up plucking my sorry backside off a bridge.” She gave him an apologetic look.

“I’m glad I was there.” The warmth in his voice seemed to spread to her bone marrow.

“So am I.”

Silence fell between them, sizzling with unspoken desires. He wanted her—it burned in his eyes, scorching her—but he made no move to take what he wanted. What they both wanted.

She made no move, either, tethered in place by caution. Desire was a chemical thing that didn’t always take reality into consideration. Wanting him wasn’t a good enough reason to throw caution to the wind.

Was it?

“We need to get inside and see if anyone’s left you any new surprises.” He dragged his gaze away and opened the passenger door.

She stifled a sigh. Even if she was willing to take a chance, clearly Seth had different ideas.

Maybe it was for the best.

A thorough room-by-room inspection of the house showed no sign of an intruder. Seth took a second look around while Rachel was making calls to the locksmith and the alarm company that handled the trucking company’s security. He wandered back downstairs as she was jotting down the appointment time she’d set with the security company for the following day.

“Did Delilah say when she’d be back from Alabama?” he asked, dropping onto the sofa across from where she sat.

“No. Why?”

“I need to go see Cleve at the hospital in Knoxville. I promised him I’d stop in at least once a week, and I’m running out of week.”

“I think maybe you’re running, period.”

His gaze whipped up to meet hers. “Meaning?”

“Ignoring this thing between us doesn’t make it go away.”

His brow furrowed. “Rachel, we agreed—”

“What scares you about it?” she asked.

“It scares me that you’re not scared,” he answered flatly. “You’re a smart woman. You’ve got to know that I’m a risky bet.”

“Every relationship is a risk.”

“You’ve lost a lot already. You’re vulnerable and lonely—”

“So, I’m emotionally incapable of knowing what I want? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

He closed his eyes a moment, frustration lining his sharp features. When he opened his eyes, they blazed with helpless need. “You’re a beautiful woman. You seem so cool and composed on the outside, but then you give me this glimpse of the passion you got roiling around inside you and I just want to bathe myself in it.” Raw desire edged his voice. “I’ve got no right to want you so damned much, but I do. And if you don’t stop me, I don’t know if I can stop myself.”

She felt the last fragile thread of caution snap, plunging her into the scary, exhilarating ether of pure, blind faith. She rose from the sofa and walked over to where he sat.

“I don’t want to stop you.” She touched his face, sliding her fingers along the edge of his jaw. “Don’t stop.”

He turned his face toward her touch, his eyes drifting closed. “Rachel—”

Bending, she pressed her mouth to his, thrilling as his lips parted beneath hers, his tongue brushing over her lower lip and slipping between her teeth to tangle with her own tongue. He tasted like sweet tea and sin.

He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her down to him until her legs straddled his. She settled over his lap, acutely aware of the hard ridge of his erection against her own sex. A guttural sound rose in her chest as she pressed her body more firmly against his, molding herself around the hard muscles and flat planes of his body.

His hands slid down her back and curved over her bottom, his fingers digging into the flesh there, pulling her even closer. His breath exploded from his throat when she rocked against him, building delicious friction between their bodies.

“What am I going to do with you?” he groaned against her throat, his lips tracing a fiery path along the tendons of her neck.

She whispered her answer in his ear and eased off his lap, pushing to her feet. She held out her hand, locking gazes with him.

She saw questions there, but also a fierce, blazing desire to give her what she’d asked for. Slowly, his hand rose and clasped hers, and he let her tug him to his feet.

Their bodies collided, tangled, then melded. He wrapped one arm around her waist, pulling her against him, while his free hand threaded through her hair to tug her head back. He claimed her mouth in a slow, hot kiss, no frantic clash of teeth and tongues but a thorough seduction, full of purpose and promise.

“You look so prim and proper on the outside,” he whispered against her temple as he led her to the stairs. “But you’ve got a danger monkey inside you.”

She laughed at the term. “Danger monkey?”

He didn’t answer until they’d reached the door of her bedroom. He stopped there, turning to look at her. As always, the intensity of his gaze made her legs wobble a little, and she grabbed the front of his shirt to hold herself upright.

“Being with me is a risk, Rachel. People will look at you differently. They’ll tell you you’re crazy. Tell me you know that.”

She could barely catch her breath, but she managed to find the words. “I know that. I don’t care.” Growing impatient, she tugged the hem of his T-shirt upward, baring the flat plane of his belly to her wandering hands. She splayed her fingers over his stomach and ran them upward, through the crisp dark hairs of his torso. They tangled in the light thatch on his chest, drawing a low groan from his throat.

Then her fingers ran across the rough flesh of his burn scar, and he froze.

Her gaze lifted to meet his. “Is that where you were burned?”

He nodded. “One of the places.”

“Let me see.”

He slid his shirt off, baring the scars on his chest and shoulder. She examined them first with her gaze, then with a featherlight touch of her fingers. “It must have hurt like hell.”

“It did. They told me at the hospital that I was lucky. Most of my burns were second degree, which would heal better. But one of the doctors said they also hurt worse.”

“Your mother must have considered you her hero.”

Her words seemed to wound him. “My mother stayed drunk for days after the fire. All she ever said to me was that I should have saved my father, too. I didn’t have the heart to tell her there wasn’t enough left of him after the explosion to save.”

Rachel pressed her cheek against his scarred shoulder. “I’m sorry. That must have been so terrible for you.”

He threaded his fingers through her hair and made her look at him. “Don’t feel sorry for me. That’s one thing I don’t need from you.”

Her pity melted in a scorching blaze of desire. “Okay. So what’s one thing you
do
need from me?”

He dipped his head and kissed her again. She heard the rattle of the doorknob as he groped for it, felt the shift of their bodies as he backed into the bedroom, drawing her along with him.

The backs of her knees connected with the bed, and she tumbled backward onto the mattress, Seth’s body falling with her. He settled into the cradle of her thighs, dragging his mouth away from hers.

“I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you,” he whispered.

A thrill of power coursed through her, making her heart pound and her head spin. She rolled him over until she was on top of him, her hands clasped with his, pinning him to the mattress. She lowered her head slowly, kissing her way from his clavicle to the sharp edge of his jaw. She stopped, finally, at the curve of his ear, nipping lightly at the lobe.

“Prove it,” she answered.

With catlike grace, he flipped her onto her back again, feral desire blazing from his eyes.

Slowly, thoroughly, he did as she’d asked.

Chapter Fourteen

“What did you want to be when you grew up?”

Rachel’s sleepy voice pierced the hazy cloud of contentment on which Seth had been floating for the past few minutes. He roused himself enough to think about what she’d asked. “I think mostly I just wanted to grow up.”

Her fingers walked lightly up his chest. “I guess there wasn’t much room for dreams in that kind of life, huh?”

“I think the dreams were all unattainable on purpose,” he answered after a moment of thought. “If you let yourself dream small, there was the possibility that it could come true. Which meant it hurt all the more when it didn’t. But if you dreamed big, you knew from the start that it was impossible. So it couldn’t really hurt you.”

She was quiet for a long moment. “I used to want to be a writer.”

“You did?” He supposed he could see it. She’d been a librarian, and her house was full of books. The temptation to create rather than simply consume was strong. He knew from his own experiences working as a mechanic the pleasure of being an active part of making something work. He’d always loved cars, even as a kid when having one of his own had seemed an impossibility. But he loved working on them even more, seeing what made them go, what could make them stop, how to make them work more efficiently.

“I did. But my father was always such a pragmatist. He liked to point out the odds against success in any endeavor. I don’t think it occurred to me until much later on that he wasn’t meaning to discourage me. He just wanted me to have the facts.”

“And you let the facts deter you.”

“I found an easier way to work with books.”

“Easier isn’t always better.”

Rachel propped her head on her hand and looked down at him, her honey-brown hair falling in a curtain over his shoulder. “That’s a very wise observation.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “That’s just bad experiences talking, sugar, not wisdom.”

“Where you do think wisdom comes from?” She bent and kissed the scar on his chest, then touched it with her forefinger. “You checked the stove for a burner the other day.”

He grimaced. “Fire and I don’t mix well.”

She slapped his chest lightly, making it sting in an oddly pleasurable way. “Like heights and me.”

“You run from things that are bad for you.” He gave her a pointed look. “Usually.”

She rolled onto her back. “Stop it, Seth.”

He turned onto his side to look at her, propping himself up on his elbow. She was only half-covered by the tangled sheets, her torso gloriously naked. In the golden late afternoon light slanting across the bed, she looked like a gilded goddess, all perfect curves and mysterious, shadowy clefts. She belonged in a better place than this, he thought. She deserved to be worshipped and adored by a worthy man.

What if he could never be that worthy, no matter how hard he tried?

“When I’m with you, I want to be perfect.”

She met his gaze with smiling eyes. “Nobody’s perfect.”

“Wrong answer, gorgeous. You’re supposed to say, ‘But you are perfect, Seth. You’re perfectly perfect. There’s never been anyone more perfect in the history of the world.’”

She laughed. “Nobody sane would say that.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“I don’t want perfect.” She rose up on her elbow as well, facing him. “I want someone who makes the effort to do the right thing for the right reasons. When I look at you, when I watch you dealing with all the suspicion and temptations you have to deal with, that’s what I see. I see a man who’s made terrible mistakes that he still suffers for, but he tries. He tries so hard to be a better man.”

Her words scared him. “What if I’m not that man?”

“You are,” she insisted, pressing her hand flat on his chest. “You’re just afraid to believe it.”

He wanted to believe it. He had spent the first fifteen years of his life wishing away reality and he’d spent the last five years doing the same thing, though for different reasons.

Dreaming the impossible because it hurt less when it didn’t come true.

But what if those dreams weren’t really impossible? What if he could have a decent life, surrounded with good people who cared about him and wanted the best for him? Other people could live that life—what if he could, too? Was that really too impossible to believe?

A distant rapping sound filtered past his thoughts. After a few seconds of silence, the sound came again.

Rachel’s head lifted toward the bedroom door. “Is that someone knocking on the door?”

The rapping downstairs had grown more insistent. With a low growl of impatience, Rachel swung her legs over the side of the bed and started gathering up her clothes, dressing as she went. Seth shrugged on his own clothes, joining her downstairs at the door.

“Wait.” He put his arm in front of her as she started to open the door, holding her back. “Let me see who it is first.”

He put one eye to the peephole and felt a ripple of surprise. Sutton Calhoun’s face stared back at him through the fisheye lens.

“Who is it?” Rachel asked.

“An old friend.”
Turned enemy,
he added silently. He unlocked the door and opened it.

The indistinct, distorted images that had flanked Sutton in the fisheye lens turned out to be Seth’s sister, Delilah, and small, dark-eyed Detective Ivy Hawkins. Seth didn’t know what he found more alarming, the grim looks on all three faces or the Bitterwood P.D. badge clipped to the front of Ivy’s belt.

“Has something happened?” he asked.

“Seth Hammond, the Bitterwood Police Department would like to ask you some questions,” Ivy said in a low, serious tone.

The sinking sensation in his chest intensified. “About what?”

Ivy’s dark eyes flickered toward Rachel. “Your involvement in the harassment and stalking of Rachel Davenport.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Rachel exclaimed, stepping forward. “Seth is not stalking me.”

“We’ve found a disk of photos that would suggest otherwise,” Sutton snapped, his gaze firmly fixed on Seth’s face. Seth didn’t miss the disgust, tinged with disappointment, in his old friend’s eyes.

“You think I’m behind what’s been happening to Rachel,” he said.

“I saw the photos.” Delilah sounded more hurt than angry. “I saw the sunglasses camera—that’s expensive equipment. Where did you get the money?”

“Sunglasses camera?” For the first time, Rachel’s voice held a hint of uncertainty.

“You were wearing them at the funeral,” Delilah said, her gaze pleading with him to give her a reasonable excuse.

“He was snapping photos of you at your father’s funeral,” Sutton said.

Seth felt Rachel’s gaze on him. He turned slowly to look at her.

Her blue eyes were dark with questions. “You were wearing sunglasses at the funeral. I remember that.”

“I was,” he agreed. “And they were camera glasses. Remember, I told you I was working for the FBI.”

For a moment, some of the doubt cleared from Rachel’s expression.

“Working for the FBI?” Delilah stared at him. “But how? You’d have had to pass background checks—” She stopped, shaking her head. “Seth, please—”

She wanted to believe him, he saw with some surprise. More than she doubted him. “Call Adam Brand,” he said quietly. Urgently.

Delilah blanched at the mention of Brand’s name, not for the first time. Seth had long suspected something bad had gone down between his sister and the FBI agent almost eight years earlier, when she was still working for the bureau.

Ivy pulled her phone from her pocket. “I’ll call him.”

As Delilah recited the D.C. office number from memory, Seth slanted a look at Rachel. She gazed back at him, trying to look supportive, but doubts circled in her blue eyes like crows in a winter sky.

“I’m not lying about this,” he told her. But listening to his low, urgent tone, he could see why the doubt didn’t immediately clear from her eyes. He sounded desperate and scared.

Because he was.

“He’s not in his office,” Ivy told them a moment later. “The person who answered said he’d taken a few days off and was out of pocket.”

Seth frowned. Brand hadn’t said anything to him about going on vacation. In fact, in all the time he’d been dealing with Brand, the man hadn’t taken more than a day or two off at a time.

“He never goes on vacation,” Delilah murmured, echoing his own thoughts.

“Why don’t we go down to the station and sort through all of this?” Ivy suggested in a calm, commanding tone. Seth looked at her thoughtfully, remembering when she’d been a snot-nosed little brat who’d followed him and Sutton all over Smoky Ridge. She’d grown up, he realized, into a tough little bird.

He looked at Rachel again. Her eyes were on Delilah, her expression pensive. Seth followed her gaze and saw his sister staring at him with blazing hope rather than doubt.

She believed him, he realized with astonishment. “We’ll keep calling,” Delilah said quietly.

Sutton, however, was having none of it. “What’s the point? You really think the FBI’s going to hire a con man to keep tabs on a grieving heiress? That’s like assigning an alligator to guard the pigpen.”

Seth turned to look at Rachel. Her eyes had gone reflective. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, and that scared him to death. “Rachel—”

“Are you going to take him in?” She turned her cool gaze to Ivy.

Ivy nodded. “Yeah. I am.”

Seth looked from Sutton’s stony face to Ivy’s. “You gonna cuff me?”

Ivy’s left eyebrow peaked. “Is it going to be necessary?”

He was tempted to make it so. Go out in a blaze, since it’s what everyone seemed to expect of him.

But he simply shook his head. “Let’s get this over with.”

He looked back as he walked out of the door, hoping to catch Rachel’s eye and try one last time to make her see that he was telling the truth.

But she had turned away, her cell phone to her ear.

He trudged down the porch steps, feeling suddenly dead to the core.

* * *

R
ACHEL
STOOD
BENEATH
the hot shower spray, her mind racing. She’d never been a woman of impulse, heedless of warning signs. Even as a child, she’d been a rule follower, thanks to her father, who’d always explained the reasons behind his strictures in ways she could understand.

Logic told her she should be down there at the police station right now, demanding that Seth explain his lies and machinations. But she just couldn’t believe any of the allegations against him.

She knew all the reasons she should, of course. Though nobody had showed her any pictures, she didn’t doubt they existed. Ivy Hawkins was a cop with no reason to lie. And even Seth’s own sister had said she’d seen the photos.

But that didn’t mean Seth had been doing something to hurt her. He’d told her he was working for the FBI, and she’d believed him. If he was following her on the orders of the mysterious Adam Brand, it made sense he might use covert surveillance equipment to do so.

She’d called the trucking company as soon as Ivy Hawkins had made it clear she was taking Seth in for questioning, wondering if there was any sort of fund available from the company to help employees with legal problems. But their lawyer had been doubtful. “What you’re describing doesn’t sound as if it’s connected to the employee’s work at the company,” Alice Barton had told her. “He wouldn’t qualify.”

She’d known the legal fund idea was a long shot, but she had a feeling Seth might have been more open to accepting her help if it came from the company instead of her own resources. No matter. She was going to figure out a way to help him whether he liked it or not.

Out of the shower, she dressed quickly, letting her hair air dry as she pondered what to do next. She needed to see the photos, she realized. See the so-called evidence against Seth. There might be something in those photos that could clue her in to who was really trying to destroy her life.

Before Delilah had dropped her off at her car the day after the Purgatory Bridge incident, she’d given Rachel her business card with her cell phone number. Where had she put it?

She was digging through the drawers of her writing desk, looking for the card, when there was another insistent knock on the door. Distracted, she almost opened the door without looking through the peephole. She stopped at the last moment and took a peek.

It was her stepbrother, Paul.

Relaxing, she opened the door. “Oh. Hi.”

He pushed past her into the house. He looked around, as if he expected to find someone else there with her. “Are you okay?”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, closing the door behind them.

“I just got a call from Jim Hallifax at the locksmith’s place down the street from the office. He said you were changing the locks here because you’d had an incident with an intruder.”

She stared at him, confused. “Why on earth would Jim Hallifax call you about that?”

Paul stared back at her a moment, looking a little sheepish. “I, uh, mentioned in passing that you were taking your father’s death badly and that I was worried about you being here all alone. I guess he thought I’d want to know that you’d had some trouble.”

She shook her head. “He had no business telling you that.”

“Are you angry that I know?”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No. But I’m fine. Really.” At least, she had been while Seth was there. Now that she was alone, however, she felt vulnerable again.

“You shouldn’t stay here alone. I could move in for a little while, at least until the locks are changed.”

“I’m getting an alarm put in, too,” she assured him. “Dad resisted it forever, but I just don’t think it’s safe to live here without some form of protection.”

The phone rang, interrupting whatever Paul was going to say in response. For a second, Rachel thought it might be Seth, but she realized he’d have called her cell phone. She let it ring, not in the mood to talk to anyone else at the moment. The machine would pick up the message.

“Call from Brantley’s Garage,” the mechanized voice drifted in from the hallway where the phone was located. Rachel frowned, trying to remember why Brantley’s Garage would be calling. As the message beep sounded, she remembered. Seth’s car with the flat tires. They’d given Brantley her phone number in case he couldn’t be reached by his cell.