Impulse (17 page)

33

“
T
his is going to sound crazy,” F
aith
said, “but all this silence is starting to get on my nerves.”

She’d put on the robe again and was sitting cross- legged on the bed, watching as Will dressed to leave. Clothed, his body was impressive. Naked, it was downright magnificent.

His shoulders were broad, roped with muscle, and one was slashed with a raised, red scar she’d wanted to ask him about, but they hadn’t spent a lot of time conversing.

Later, she decided.

His torso, which carried not an ounce of excess flesh and was ripped enough to do laundry on, narrowed down to lean cowboy hips. His legs were long, firm, and, like his arms, sinewy and muscled.

He was male physical perfection personified, and if she’d been an artist, she would have been salivating to immortalize him in marble. As it was, she was just salivating.

“It happens.”

She felt a little twinge of loss as he pulled the jeans over the tight-fitting knit boxers. Even after all they’d shared, she had a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to get between Will Bridger and his Calvins.

“You can get so used to the wind blowing, it’s difficult to adjust when it stops,” he said. “Like the yelling.” He plucked the khaki shirt from the floor. “People grow up having to shout over the wind; when it’s not blowing, it takes everyone a while to realize they don’t have to scream anymore.”

"I noticed that.”

Though what was drawing her attention at the moment was that dark arrowing of hair that disappeared beneath the briefs. Faith felt another pang when he buttoned the shirt.

“When I stopped at Earl’s Exxon to fill up this morning, Earl Jenkins nearly screamed my ear off,” she said. “I thought perhaps he’d started going deaf since the last time I was there last week. It was the same thing with Rayanne at the market.
And last night Mike claimed he was even having to adjust the volume when callers phoned in. But I thought he was exaggerating.”

“Nope. It’s just one of the symptoms.” He tucked in the shirt. Next those same fingers that had created such havoc on every inch of her body deftly refastened the metal buttons. “It’s like everything suddenly gets exaggerated. People talk a lot louder, drink more. Laugh more. Fight more.
Hayworth could probably do a study on it. Back when I was in high school, a sociology professor tracked birth rates for a three-year period and there was always a boom nine months after the wind stopped for a day or two.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I don’t remember all the socio-scientific details, but the gist of the study was that any abrupt change in weather can cause a loss of inhibitions. He likened it to those crazy hurricane parties you see people havin’ down in Florida. People rip off their clothes and fuck like minks.”
He grinned. “Needless to say, at sixteen I found that idea real appealing.”

“I can imagine,” Faith said drily. “So, is that what this”—she smoothed a hand over rumpled white sheets that still carried the redolent scent of their lovemaking—“was all about? Wind-cessation sex?”

“Hell no.” His square jaw angled; a flash of hot annoyance darkened his eyes so it was impossible to tell where the iris left off and the
pupil began. “You can’t re
ally think that?”

“No.” She scooped a hand through her hair. “I was being overly defensive.” She manag
ed a faint, self-
deprecating smile. “Maybe this wind thing is getting to me, too. Making me exaggerate stories in my mind. Especially since, if Selma down at The Wild Hair is to be believed—”

“Faith.” He crossed the few feet to the bed, sat down, and put his arm around her shoulder. “I left Hazard
when I was a few weeks from turning eighteen. I’m not saying that I didn’t do my share of teenage fooling around. But Selma isn’t even remotely qualified to comment on any women I may have tumbled after leaving town.
In fact, except for one admittedly memorable Halloween party when I made it to first base with her, that’s the only firsthand knowledge she could possibly have concerning my sex life.”

“Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop her from speculating,” Faith said. “And sharing those speculations with anyone who’ll listen.”

Faith had never considered herself a jealous woman. Until now. She also knew that if she worried about every woman Will might have had sex with, whatever relationship they might be able to forge would be doomed from the start.

“No. It doesn’t.” He shook his head. “But as you’ve undoubtedly figured out, given the fact that among the morning coffee club at The Branding Iron, your sex life ranks right up there with beef prices and the weather—”

“My lack of sex life, you mean.”

“Obviously you were saving it up for a man who knew what to do with it.”

Faith didn’t take offense at his male arrogance, because if she was to be perfectly honest, it was one of the things that had attracted her to him.

“My point is,” he continued, “gossip is the coin of the realm in a small town. Selma’s mother was self
-
appointed queen of
that realm while I was growing u
p here. From what I’ve heard, Selma’s inherited
her
tiara.”

“That’s putting it mildly. If the woman had been around in Wyoming’s pioneer days, the Pony Express wouldn’t have had to hire all those orphans to deliver the mail.”

He smiled, with his lips and his eyes. “She’s always needed excitement. If there isn’t any readily available, she’ll try to stir something up.”
He pressed a snowflake-light kiss against the top of her head. Her temple. “Has she mentioned the time aliens landed on top of Devil
’
s Tower?”

“I don’t believe it’s come up.” Or if it had, she’d missed it. Except when she was talking about Will, Faith tended to tune the chatty hairdresser out. Fortunately, Selma seemed to prefer her conversations to be one-sided, so responses weren’t often necessary.

“Isn’t that the mountain Richard Dreyfuss’s character carved out of mashed potatoes in
Close Encounters
of the Third Kind
?”

‘The very one. Some people, like Selma, obviously have a problem determining between fiction and real
life.” There was amusement in his tone. “By the time
she finished embellishing the tale, a great many people were convinced we’d been invaded by pod people,
which caused a run on Reynolds Wrap at the mercantile.”

“Aluminum foil?” Faith eased back so she could look up at him.

“Obviously you’ve never covered an alien invasion during your reporting days.” He brushed his lips against hers. “Otherwise you’d know aluminum-foil hats block alien mind-control rays.”

“Live and learn.” Her hands slipped around his waist. She could feel her body softening, fitting itself to his solid strength. “I’ll keep that in mind if the aliens ever return.”

“Despite what the
National Enquirer
put on the front page, after they picked up the story from the
Haz
ard Herald,
they were never here in the first place.”

He kissed her again. No more than a feathery brush of his mouth against hers, but it was still enough to cloud her mind. “She made it all up?”

“Not exactly all. Seems the northern lights reflected off a weather balloon sent up from Warren Air Force Base. Of course, there are still skeptics—like Selma and those guys who live alone out in their one-room cabins, sharing conspiracy theories about Area 51, who insist on believing the alien story.”

He stroked her cheek with his knuckles, then curled his fingers around the back of her neck.

“Getting back to your question about what happened earlier, I wanted you the instant I laid eyes on you back in Savannah. Hell, you’ve got to believe that I’d want you, wind or no wind, rain or shine, snow, sleet, whatever the weather.”

“I do.” She smoothed her hands up his back, felt sinew and muscle beneath the stiffly starched khaki.
“Believe you want me.” Which was a major leap for her. Despite her name, faith had never come easily for her.

“Good. But dammit, as complicated as things already were back then by the second time we’d gone out, I knew it was becoming a lot more than that. Since we didn’t have time to explore it further, I don’t know what, exactly.” His tone took on an edge of frustration.

Faith suspected it wasn’t often Will Bridger was at a loss. She also suspected he didn’t like it very much. “But, like I said, I figure since fate seems to have landed us both back here together, it’s time we stopped playing games and found out.”

She drew in a breath. Let it out. The moment she’d tried to avoid had finally arrived and she wasn’t any more ready for it than she’d been three years ago.

"You’re right about us needing to talk.” Where to begin?

“Yeah. I know. Because there’s things about me, things that happened down in Savannah, you deserve to know.”

“You’re not the only one with a past.”

And wasn’t that the understatement of the century. Any man would probably have trouble accepting what had been done to her. And worse, what she’d done to herself to survive during her teenage years on the mean streets.

Surely a cop would have a harder time than most men?

“Not unexpected, s
ince neither of us are sixteen-
year-old virgins.”

Here’s your opening. Just slip in the news that you lost your virginity at twelve.

He traced a fingertip around her lips, which, instead of forming the words reverberating in her mind, merely parted at the light caress. “But there’s nothing that you could’ve done that’s going to make me feel any differently.
I’m going to get Erin Gallagher’s killer,” he promised. “Then I want to go away somewhere with you. Away from all this snow and ice. Some place warm and sunny. Tropical. We’ll feed each other ripe fruit—”

“Passion fruit." The idea sounded like heaven. If he’d still be speaking to her after he heard the truth about her less than pristine past.

“You bet. And we’ll lie in the sun, and I’ll rub coconut oil all over your body, then—”
He cursed without heat as his cell phone rang. Given that he epitomized the Lone Ranger, she was not surprised he’d chosen the
William Tell
Overture.

“Bridger.” Watching him carefully, Faith detected the faint tensing. “Okay, I’ll be right there.”
He closed the phone and turned to Faith. “That was Sam. The autopsy report was just faxed over from Jackson.”

“Will you let me know what it says?”

“I can’t keep giving you exclusives, Faith. Not without compromising the investigation, now that we’ve had sex.”

She opened her mouth to point out he hadn’t
minded mixing sex an
d work three years ago. Then re
minded herself it wasn’t really fair to continue to hold that against him. Especially since she hadn’t exactly been a bastion of truth herself.
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“Okay, then.” He bent down and brushed his lips against hers. “I’ll fill you in as soon as I can. Meanwhile, keep thinking warm thoughts.”

As the kiss deepened, Faith knew she’d have no problem with that request.

34

W
here the hell was he? What was
the point in paying people to always be available if they felt free to just take off whenever they pleased?

Susan glared out the window, through the thick screen of tall pine trees, toward the lodge. Where she was now wishing she’d just stayed, instead of insisting on this chalet. The log-sided, three-bedroom rental with the vaulted wooden ceiling, gourmet kitchen with granite countertops, hot tub, game room, and wireless internet was way more space than she needed, but it was important for a woman in her position to keep up appearances.

It was already growing dark. Deep purple shadows were spreading across the snow, and the sky was so low she imagined she could reach up and touch it. Despite the fire blazing in the two-story stone fireplace, Susan could tell the temperature outside was plummeting.

She shivered against the bone-numbing chill that was creeping into the cabin on silent cat feet. She’d always disliked winter, which was ironic, given that she’d
chosen to leave Southern California—and her marriage—to live most of her adult life first in the mountains of Utah, then Colorado.

But Erin needed to be where the coaches were. And where the skating press was more likely to gather. So, she’d put up with the snow and the ice and the cold.

A mother, after all, had to make sacrifices.

Now Erin was dead. And Susan’s life as she knew it was over.

And that damn Chad, who’d said he was just running over to the lodge gift shop for cigarettes, still hadn’t come back to mix her martinis.

He hadn’t taken the car. So he couldn’t have gone far. She’d bet her new Armani jacket the bastard was in one of the bars with some ski bunny Or that bimbo cop.

Susan had seen the way he’d been looking at her. Like a cocaine addict looking at a line of white powder. Bad enough that he might be fucking her at this very moment. Worse yet might be what he was telling her.

Pulling on her mink jacket and boots, she stomped out of the chalet, determined to remind him who, exactly, was paying for those little bags of coke that kept disappearing up his nose.

F
aith had been living alone since she was sixteen years old. Never had empty rooms seemed lonely.

Until now.

When she’d first come to Hazard and started working at KWIND, the change in hours had played havoc
with her inner clock. But after a few weeks she’d become adjusted to working the midnight shift and hadn’t had any trouble sleeping during the day.

Until now.

Even after having been awake for over twenty-four hours, she tossed and turned, her mind whirling, scenes
f
lashing like strobe lights in her mind: the brightly lit crime scene at the lake; Josh, literally sick with the horror of the innocent girl’s murder; Sal showing up in Hazard—and where the hell was he, anyway?—and most vivid of all, the past hour with Will, which would, whatever happened between them, always remain one of the most amazing experiences of her life. Even better than when they’d been together in Savannah.

She hoped there would be more. Whom was she kidding? She hoped there’d be a lot more.

The problem was, although he was certainly willing to bend the rules during his sex-trafficking investigation, she suspected Will Bridger undoubtedly lived in a cop world of good guys and bad guys. Black and white.

How would he ever deal with all the shades of gray she’d accumulated in her life? Not to mention that she’d lied to him.

Oh, she hadn't out and out lied. She’d never said, “Oh, by the way, I was never a prostitute.” And she’d never told him that she wasn’t married.

But she suspected he wouldn’t see it that way. And neither would she if she were him.

The thing to do, she decided, as she gave up on trying
to get any sleep and climbed out of bed, was to go to the inn and track down Sal, before he found her.

She’d clear the air, apologize profusely, grovel as much as it took to send him on his way back to the desert.

Then, hopefully when she had the long-overdue conversation with Will, she’d be able to honestly assure him that she was on her way to being free.

She could only pray it would be that easy. But just in case it wasn’t, she grabbed the red bag with the revolver as she left the house.

Just in case.