Trusting a Stranger (13 page)

Her lips cut him off. Her fingers dug in to his hair, then ran smoothly, soothingly, over the back of his neck. She was pouring herself into the kiss, and Graham accepted it. Reluctantly at first, but with increased acceptance. Then with enthusiasm. He met her attention forcefully, his tongue finding purchase between her lips, his hands getting lost in her auburn tresses. She sank into his arms. She belonged there. When she pulled away, Graham felt the loss all over.

Then she spoke, and the loss was forgotten.

“My bedroom is upstairs,” she said, her words loaded with promise. “Third door on the left.”

Wordlessly, Graham scooped her up and moved at double time to the staircase.

Chapter Twenty-Two

They were a tangled
mess of arms and legs and bedsheets and sweat. Calloway’s muscular, oversize body took up three quarters of the available space. Never before had Keira’s double bed in her childhood room seemed so small.

But it’s the perfect size, too
, she thought as she opened her sleepy eyes and looked over at him.

His face was still peaceful, and Keira was a little envious. A silly grin was plastered on her own. And her mind refused to sit still because it was too full of sweet nothings.

Beautiful.

Incredible.

Amazing.

And the way he said her name. The way he whispered it. The way he called it out, as if there was no one else in the world.

And what he’d said earlier was right. It
was
crazy to feel like this. It would be crazy to feel like this even after a few months. But after only a few days... That pushed it right over the edge. But damned if Keira cared.

She examined his face carefully, memorizing the lines of it in the soft morning light. She liked the thick crest of his eyebrows and the dusting of silver in his hair. Already, the shadow of a beard peppered his cheeks. She liked that, too.

Her heart wanted to burst through her chest with its fullness.

But there was a heaviness there, too. One the allover glow couldn’t quite mask.

Because Calloway wasn’t safe, and their time together was finite. His hideaway was no longer an option, her parents’ house wasn’t any better and her own apartment was the first place the man who’d killed Calloway’s family would look.

Their only option was to run somewhere else.

“No.”

Calloway’s statement was soft but decisive. And he hadn’t even opened his eyes.

“No, what?” Keira replied.

“I can feel you thinking.”

“Someone else’s thinking can’t be felt,” she argued.

He cracked one lid. “Yours can.”

Keira made a weak effort to detangle herself from his arms, but he held her firmly in place. She didn’t struggle too hard. Truthfully, she was happier to rest her head against him than she was to resist him.

“I didn’t even know you were awake,” she said as she trailed her palm across his chest.

“Little hard to stay asleep while you’re plotting something that’s going to kill you.”

“That isn’t what I was doing.”

Calloway eased his hold and rolled both of them to their sides, so they were facing each other.

“No?” he said. “What
were
you thinking about, then?”

“Leaving.”

“Leaving?” he repeated, sounding surprised.

“Leaving together,” she clarified. “You don’t have to find Ferguson. Or risk
your
life. Not if we run.”

“Keira...”

“They already think I’m dead,” she reminded him. “Dave told me the media was all over the story.”

Calloway’s expression clouded. “And you’re just going to walk away and let it stay that way?”

A lump formed in Keira’s throat. “They’ll mourn and move on.”

“How long will you last? What if one of
them
dies? Will you stay away when they have the funeral? Or one of your parents gets sick or has an accident?” He shook his head, then added in a harsh voice, “You have no idea what you’re saying. What you’re committing to.”

“I don’t see what other choice I have.”

“You can stay here, and let your family and friends know you’re alive.”

“And what happens to you?”

He smoothed her hair back from her face. “Are you asking what happens to
me
, or what happens to that
us
we talked about?”

Keira didn’t answer him. She
was
worried about Calloway directly. She didn’t want the police to catch him or for him to be arrested for a crime he hadn’t committed. But she also had to admit—at least to herself—that she was scared of losing him. She was just too embarrassed to make the declaration out loud.

Two short days, and you need this man as badly as you need air.

Even thinking it was enough to make her face heat up.

When she stayed silent, Calloway sighed. “I’ve spent a long time isolated from the people I knew. It nearly killed me to hear the rumors. It nearly broke me a hundred times. Hiding is the hardest damned thing I’ve ever done. I would never forgive myself for dragging you into that life.”

“I don’t care,” Keira said, her voice full of residual post-lovemaking conviction.

“You
think
you don’t care.”

“Don’t tell me what I think.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

Calloway leaned forward and gave her bottom lip a little tug with his teeth. Then he released it and ran a hand over the same spot, sending renewed sparks of desire through her. Keira stifled a pleasure-filled sigh. Calloway’s face was determined, his jaw set and his eyes not in the slightest bit tired. And Keira had the distinct feeling that he was trying to distract her. He formed a lazy path from her mouth to her shoulder to her hip, then traced a circle over her sheet-covered abdomen.

Two more seconds of
that
and it’s going to work.

Keira grabbed his hand, determined herself. She needed to make him understand that she wasn’t going to just let him slip away. He tried to pull his hand out of hers. She held firm.
Take that.
But his thumb was still loose, and it began to move up and down, just below her belly button, and it was far more distracting than his whole palm had been.

She willed herself not to give in to the temptation he presented.

“You’ve been gone for a long time,” she said. “So maybe you’ve forgotten how to compromise. Relationships are a two-way street, Calloway.”

He didn’t even blink at her use of the
R
word. “What do you want me to do, Keira? Let Dave take me in? Say the word, and that’s what will happen. But there is absolutely zero chance of me allowing you to abandon your life on my behalf.”

Keira’s stomach dropped. “You can’t go to jail.”

“I will, if it means keeping you safe.”

“I’m not letting you sacrifice yourself for me any more than you’re letting me sacrifice myself for you!”

In an unexpected move, Calloway flipped her from her side to her back, then propped himself above her, his biceps flexing with the effort.

“You’re a stubborn girl, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“That blush tells me you
know
you’re a stubborn girl,” he teased. “I
have
to prove my innocence, Keira. Or we don’t stand a chance. Do you know where Dave went?”

“He said he had to take care of a few things.” She paused. “Calloway...”

“Yes?”

Keira pulled the sheet over her chest, then propped herself on her elbow, facing him. “Why would he suddenly start thinking you’re guilty?”

Calloway’s expression clouded with surprise. “Is that what he said?”

“Not exactly. It’s what he implied. Or maybe what I inferred. But it was like he was trying to scare me.”

“But he
knows
I’m innocent,” Calloway muttered.

“He knows it?”

Calloway gave her tight nod. “Dave’s the one who found Holly. Hours before I got home.”

Keira frowned. “But the papers said it was
you
who found her.”

He ran his fingers over the ridges in her forehead. “I thought you didn’t believe everything you read.”

“I don’t. But that’s a pretty big discrepancy.”

“Lie down with me again.”

Keira opened her mouth to tell him no, they had more important things to worry about. But when she caught the pleading look in his eyes, she was powerless to resist. She curled up beside him, her body tucked beside his, her head resting on his chest.

* * *

G
RAHAM
WAITED
UNTIL
Keira was settled, the soft scent of her hair flooding his senses, calming the thud of his heart.

“If you want to listen, I’ll tell you the story,” he said, his voice low.

“Okay,” she agreed.

And for the first time, he told the full truth, and shared the hard thoughts that kept him awake for four years.

“Dave and I met in high school. We started out hating each other. We fought, actually, in one of those parking-lot fights, with the crowd of guys egging us on and screaming for blood. God knows what it was about. We both got suspended. Not a first for me, but Dave’s dad was a cop, and he was royally pissed off that I was ruining his kid’s life. He turned up at my house, demanding to know what
I
had done. When he saw my living situation, well, I guess he took pity on me. Absentee mom. Drunk dad. So instead of giving me hell, he took me home and commanded Dave to take care of me.” Graham paused and laughed as he remembered it.

Dave’s father was everything Dave wasn’t. Hard and decisive on the outside, kind and insightful on the inside. He didn’t take anyone’s garbage. Graham admired him. Loved him.

“He changed my life,” Graham told Keira, curling a strand of her hair around one of his fingers. “He gave me value. Helped me get that scholarship for med school and made me believe I could do it. He died when we were twenty, and I promised him I’d see it through. He even left me a bit of money to help out. But Dave took his death badly, and pretty soon it was me carrying his weight instead of the other way around. Sorting out his fights and saving his rear end every weekend. If it hadn’t been for his father’s name, I doubt he would ever have made it past the first day as a policeman. He developed a hell of a gambling problem and I was always bailing him out of one debt or another. We went on like that for years, Dave messing up and me picking up the pieces.”

“Just like you did with Holly,” Keira added.

“Just like that,” Graham agreed, then took a thick breath. “Which brings me to the next bit. Things moved fast for Holly and me. Met and married in less than a year. I adopted Sam...and Holly adopted Dave.”

“They had an affair?” Keira asked.

“There were things...a pattern, I guess, that took me a while to notice. Money moved from her account on the same day he paid off a car he could never afford in the first place. Every time Holly made a cash withdrawal, Dave would show up with something newer and shinier. A suit. A computer. A vacation in the Bahamas. And he stopped asking
me
for money. Holly got more and more distant. And once, I overheard a very heated conversation between the two of them. Holly was yelling about jealousy and entitlement, and Dave was yelling back about sharing what should never have been mine.”

“But you never asked either of them if your suspicion was true?”

Graham shook his head. “I rationalized
not
asking. What if I was wrong? I didn’t want to ruin nearly a decade and a half of friendship. Or worse, jeopardize what I had with Sam. So I just started the divorce process on the sly. I hired the best lawyer I could afford, who promptly figured out that we were near to broke. My income and our assets were the only thing keeping us afloat. All of Holly’s savings were gone, her investments mostly sold off, her cards maxed out. Which meant I had no choice but to confront her. But I never even got as far as asking about Dave before she flipped out. She threw everything I owned out on the street. Then threw me out, too. Three days later, the cops were at my hotel room door. Holly had drunk herself into a stupor, fallen down the stairs and called 9-1-1, blaming
me.
For the first time in a long time, Dave had to come to my aid. He bailed me out, dropped me off, then went to reason with Holly. Instead... Well, you know what he found.”

“That’s terrible.” Keira’s voice was full of the same ache that plagued Graham’s heart, but then she spoke again, and her tone was also puzzled. “Why didn’t he just report it himself?”

“I told him not to,” Graham admitted. “I thought I was protecting him. And what was left of Holly’s reputation.”

“And that’s why he helped you all these years?”

“Yes.”

Keira pushed herself up and met Graham’s eyes. “But, if he just admitted that he was there first, wouldn’t that exonerate you?”

Graham shrugged. “Exonerate? No. Create reasonable doubt? Maybe. Or it might just implicate Dave, and as much as I question his motives at the moment...he’s not a killer.”

“You know that for sure?”

“I believe it one hundred percent.”

“So we’re back to wondering why he suddenly changed his mind about you being the good guy.”

Graham stared at her pinched-up features and couldn’t suppress a smile.

“Is that where we are?” he teased. “I thought we were in bed, getting ready to—”

She cut him off. “I’m going to ask him.”

Graham’s grin fell off his face immediately. “No.”

“Are you telling me what to do again, Mountain Man?”

“This time, yes, I am. Do
not
ask Dave Stark why he changed his mind about protecting me.”

“Asking him is the only thing that makes sense,” Keira argued. “And you’re supposed to be chasing after Ferguson.”

“You take priority, Keira. I’ll deal with Dave first,” Graham said grimly. “He owes me an explanation for what he said to you, and for leaving you here alone.”

She opened her mouth as if she was going to protest again, then closed it and laid her head back on his chest.

“Calloway?” she said after a minute.

“Yes?”

He braced himself for another spiel about how and why she should endanger herself. Instead, her fingernail traced his collarbone, then his pectoral muscles, then found the edge of the sheet, just below his waistline.

“What were you saying before?”

“About?” The word came out throaty and full of heat.

Now her hand slipped
under
the sheet.

“About what we were getting ready to do in this bed,” she filled in.

With a growl that made her laugh, Graham grabbed her by the hips and lifted her over top of him.