Too Charming (14 page)

Under his scrutiny, she truly believed herself to be attractive. Not just now, as he gazed at her with molten eyes, but ever since she’d met him. Not since Luke had a man made her feel so utterly desirable. Or made her want so much. The thrust of his powerful body inside her was like the most delicious torture, each lunge deep inside her intensifying what she was feeling so that soon she was just one giant mass of highly sensitised nerve endings.

Finally, clutching at his taut buttocks, she pulled him towards her and came in an explosion of feeling, arching her hips and crying out his name. As she slowly came down to earth she felt him buck inside her as he, too, achieved his shuddering climax.

‘Beautiful,’ he whispered into her ear on a ragged breath. ‘Fantastically, amazingly, beautiful.’

The warm glow of satisfaction that had settled throughout her body doubled at his words. She hadn’t let him down.

‘Yes, it was, wasn’t it,’ she agreed on a sigh.

Resting on his elbows, their bodies still joined, Scott tenderly kissed her forehead. ‘It was, but actually I was talking about you.’

She shook her head, moved by his sentiment, but knowing it wasn’t strictly true. ‘Me? No way …’

He silenced her, very effectively, with another deep, drugging kiss. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘No, I’m not, but …’

‘Then you need to believe me when I tell you that you’re beautiful.’ His voice was low and seductive, his breath warm against her skin. ‘Maybe not in the conventional sense, but who wants conventional when you can have enticingly, excitingly, gloriously different?’

Megan shook her head. He was too much. It wasn’t enough that he’d captivated her body, now he was dazzling her mind. She’d have to be so careful he didn’t make inroads into her heart, too. ‘I can’t believe I’m here, with you, in your bed,’ she told him, trying to keep things simple.

‘I can.’

She looked up at the face that was so close to hers. God, he was a handsome brute. It was no wonder he oozed self-assurance. ‘You really did believe that we’d end up like this, didn’t you? I must be so pathetically weak.’

With his hands he smoothed back her hair.
‘Not weak. Intelligent. I knew you’d soon realise what you were missing out on.’

She expelled a noisy breath, half amusement,
half exasperation. ‘You know, sometimes I can’t believe the words that come out of your mouth.’

He looked slightly miffed, but there was enough of a twinkle in his eye for her to
realise he was playing with her. ‘Hey, can you deny you’re smart?’

‘Oh, for the love of God, put a sock in it, Scott. I’m not going spend all night arguing with you.’

The amusement in his eyes turned to something darker, hotter. More intense. ‘Good, because I have something much more interesting planned.’

He lowered his mouth back on
to hers and began to kiss her again, playing with her lips, his tongue darting teasingly into her mouth. She felt him moving against her, hardening, and raised an eyebrow. ‘I guess I’m not getting dinner just yet.’

Running his hands down the length of her body, he whispered into her ear. ‘You guess right.’

Chapter Fifteen

Monday morning and Megan was back at work and finding herself on the wrong end of a grilling from a fellow officer about how she’d spent her weekend.

‘Well, things have certainly moved on from the last time we spoke,’ Ann gently mocked over a cup of coffee in the station canteen. ‘What happened to
we’re just friends
?’

Megan squirmed in her seat. ‘What can I say?’ she answered with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘It seems I’m as gullible as all the other women that have gone before me.’

‘Good looks and charm won the day, eh?’

Wincing, Megan took a gulp of the brown stuff in her cup. To call it coffee was stretching the imagination too far. ‘It’s galling to admit, but yes, I guess they did. In the end I succumbed, just as he predicted I would.’ Was it her imagination, or did the coffee taste even more bitter than usual?

Ann looked at her with concern. ‘Do you really think that’s all this was? A competition?’

She didn’t know the answer to that. She really didn’t. When he’d taken her to bed Saturday night, it had felt so perfectly right. He’d been the lover of her dreams: attentive, passionate, tender. When he hadn’t been making her body tingle with his touch, he’d been making her mind spin with his lavish compliments. But now, in the cold light of a Monday morning, none of it felt real. ‘Who knows?’ she answered truthfully. ‘I don’t even know how I feel, never mind how he feels.’

‘Do you want to see him again?’

‘Yes.’ She hadn’t needed time to think about that.  ‘Oh God, Ann, when I’m with him I know there’s so much more to him than the charming but shallow man I had him down as. But when I’m away from him, I wonder if that’s just me desperately wanting to see something in him that isn’t there, to justify my attraction to him.’

‘Considering how badly hurt you were by the charming but ultimately insincere Luke, that’s hardly surprising. It seems to me there’s only one way for you to find out though. See him again.’

Easy for Ann to say, but Scott hadn’t phoned since she’d left his bed in the very early hours of Sunday morning. Nor was she certain what she’d say if he did. Her body wanted to see him again, that was for sure, but the rest of her was more hesitant. Scott was dangerous. She prided herself on her common sense and self-discipline, yet both had gone out of the window since he’d started his charm offensive on her. It alarmed her to think how easily he’d started to push through her defensive barriers. Downright terrified her to think how he might, if she continued to see him, rip those barriers clean away. Perhaps it was better to leave it as one memorable night. She wasn’t sure if the reward of a short-term fling was worth the potential risk to her heart and sanity.

Later that morning Megan received a call that forced all thoughts of Scott Armstrong firmly into the background. A body had been discovered, dumped in a ditch. The body of a six-year-old girl. Immediately her heart leapt into her mouth and she’d had to quickly remind herself that Sally was at school. She’d dropped her off herself. She was fine.

Now, as she trod warily through the damp, eerily quiet woods towards the body in the ditch, her thoughts were focused not on her own daughter, but on someone else’s. Through the clearing she saw a small group standing round a prostate body and readied herself for what she was about to see. Slipping silently alongside the pathologist, she joined the huddle and stared down at the victim. Her lifeless body was hideously
pale, the skin covered with blackish bruises and dried blood stains. Megan shivered and was forced to shut her eyes for a moment to steady herself. Nothing could ever prepare her for the sight of a dead child. The reality was always far more horrific than anything her imagination could conjure.

Steeling herself, she glanced back down at the victim. There was no doubt in her mind that this poor girl had been murdered. The bruises, she suspected, were old.
Evidence of previous abuse. The stab wounds on her chest, however, were fresh. Her stomach churned violently, threatening to spew up the contents of her breakfast.

‘Megan?’ The pathologist was looking at her, concern in his eyes. ‘Are you okay?’

She blinked, swallowed, and pulled herself together. She couldn’t help the poor girl now. It was too late. The best she could do was find the monster who’d done that to her. ‘Sorry, yes, I’m fine. It’s just …’

‘The kids are always the worst, aren’t they?’ He shook his head sadly at the battered, twisted body and then patted her arm. ‘We’ll finish up here. You start working on catching the bastard. I’d estimate time of death to be around 9 p.m. last night. When I’ve got more details, I’ll let you know.’

Together with her small team, Megan worked on the murder case for the rest of the day. Through school registers and questioning they discovered who the girl was. That she’d grown up in a dysfunctional family. Her mother a drug addict, father unknown. On a hunch Megan brought in the mother for questioning and found out who her latest boyfriend was. They tracked him down, only to end up frustrated when he wasn’t at the garage he’d been working at recently. The mechanics told her they’d expected him in that morning, but he hadn’t shown up. Interesting.

The hairs on the back of her neck started to prickle as she put the pieces together. It fitted a sickening but sadly all too familiar pattern. Addict mother, in her need of her next fix, overlooks the safety of her daughter. Infatuated with the boyfriend, or more particularly the highs he provides her, she fails to notice her daughter is becoming withdrawn, her body showing signs of abuse. Megan would put this month’s salary on her hunch that the boyfriend murdered the little girl. Perhaps because she finally fought back, perhaps because she threatened to tell her mother.

‘We’ll find him,
Sarge.’

She looked up from her desk to find one of the junior detectives standing outside her office. Briefly she nodded in agreement before turning back to her computer. Too bloody right they would. If she had to work all day and all night for the next few weeks, she’d track the scum down. Right now, however, she couldn’t do any more. Her head was pounding, and her mind far too full of images of the tragic young girl. All Megan wanted to do was go home and hug her daughter. Her beautiful, perfect, very much alive, daughter. Circling her shoulders to release some of the tension, Megan finally turned off her computer and tidied away the files from her desk. With a heavy heart she walked into the corridor.
And came face-to-face with Scott.

‘Hey.’ He reached out an arm to steady her as she literally bumped into him. His eyes narrowed as he took in her exhausted appearance. ‘Rough day?’

‘You could say that.’ She didn’t want to deal with Scott right now. She was too raw and emotional.

‘Well, I’ve got the perfect solution.
You, me, two steaks and a good bottle of wine. What do you reckon?’

It was all about the timing. This morning, before the phone call telling her of the body, she’d have been very tempted by the invitation. Not to mention flattered and relieved that he wasn’t quite ready to cross her off his list now that he’d bedded her. Now, however, the thought of doing anything other than spending the night with Sally in her arms left her cold. ‘I’m going home to be with my daughter,’ she told him bluntly. Her tone was far harsher than it should have been, but right now she couldn’t manage soft, or apologetic. She wanted to go home, and Scott, with his large frame and annoying questions, was standing in her way.

She attempted to shoulder past him, but he caught her by both arms and pulled her back. ‘Not so fast, Detective.’ When he was satisfied that she wasn’t about to run away, he released one arm to hold her by the chin, forcing her to look up at him. ‘What did I do?’

‘Christ, Scott.’ She expelled a harsh breath, part frustration,
part anger. Not with him, but with the world. ‘Not everything is about you.’

Scott winced as the words cut through him. Despite the time they’d spent together, she still had him down as
self-centred and arrogant. ‘What’s wrong?’

She tried to jerk her arm out of his hold. ‘Leave me alone, Scott.’ Then, as if as an afterthought, ‘Please.’

He hadn’t intended to let go. At least not until she told him why she was looking so distressed. Why her face was so drained of colour and her eyes so flat. But then she said please, and that, together with the pleading light in her eyes, had him dropping his hand. ‘Okay. You know where to find me.’

She wasn’t listening. She was rushing down the corridor as if her life depended on it. Scott let out a frustrated sigh. Women. How the hell was he meant to understand them? Something had got to her today. Was she cross because she’d expected him to call earlier? He let out a snort of disgust at his own vanity. She’d looked far too cut up for it to be about him. There was clearly something far deeper tearing at her. What really upset him was that she hadn’t been prepared to share it with him. He’d been good enough to share her body with the other night, but wasn’t, it seemed, good enough to share what was on her mind. In previous relationships he would have looked at that as a blessing. Now, with Megan, the thought was anything but. It hurt.

Wearily he made his way back to his car. It looked like it was going to be steak for one, in front of the football. His mobile rang as he was throwing his briefcase into the boot.

‘Armstrong.’

‘Hey, it’s Nancy. How are you?’

Pissed off, frustrated. He checked himself. ‘Fine. Just on my way home.’

‘Ah. I was hoping to catch you about the Kevin Rogers case. I’ve got some more information I want to go through with you.’

Scott thought of the dull evening ahead. He might as well work it. ‘Well, if you don’t mind coming round to mine, we can discuss it there.’

‘Great, thanks. I’ll see you in a bit.’

So now, instead of a romantic meal with his lover, he was going to spend the evening working with an ex. Bloody perfect.

Nancy and he spent the following few hours going through her meeting with the prostitute who’d previously gone on record as stating that Kevin Rogers assaulted her, and then mysteriously withdrawn her statement.

‘Eventually she admitted to me that she’d been told by her pimp to make the original statement. He’d promised to see her right if she did this favour for him. But the closer it came to the trial, the more she’d worried about telling the lie, until she finally withdrew the allegation a few hours before it came to trial.’

Scott nodded and tried to ignore the growl of his stomach. Tried not to think of the fat, juicy steaks he had sitting in the fridge. ‘Did she have any idea why this man wanted her to lie in the first place?’

Nancy shook her head. He noticed that she’d let her hair down and it was falling over her shoulders, wisps of it trailing into her cleavage. A cleavage that she was amply displaying. He had a worrying feeling that the hair had come down in his honour. As had the button on her blouse.

‘No, not really.
She thought it was for someone else. There were rumours of a vice cop that he was friendly with. One who turned a blind eye to what they were doing. Maybe it was for him.’

‘If he exists,’ he replied dryly. Finally he could ignore his hunger no longer. ‘Look, Nancy, I’m starving.’ He thought about how easy it would be to ask her to stay and share the steaks with him. But what he really wanted to be doing was eating with Megan. Eating, drinking, talking. Making love. He sighed. No, it wasn’t fair to ask Nancy to stay. She would get the wrong idea.
‘Why don’t you quickly take me through the rest of your notes. We can discuss it further on the phone tomorrow, once I’ve had a chance to digest them.’

The look of disappointment on her face made him extra glad he hadn’t asked her to stay. He was finding his new relationship enough of a challenge. There was no way he wanted to get entangled in an old one.