Veil of Night (30 page)

Nope, Eric thought. Not a stand-by-your-man kinda woman at all.

There had been interviews to give and paperwork to fill out, but finally, Jaclyn was home. She turned on the lights as she walked through, since it had been dark for a while. It was late, past her usual bedtime. Nothing made you appreciate home like having it taken away for a couple of days. Her couch, her chair, her kitchen. Her own bathroom. Her bed.
Home
. Knowing that the woman who’d tried to kill her was locked up added to Jaclyn’s appreciative mood. For the first time in days, she could relax.

Garvey had picked her and Eric up at the scene of the accident and had transported them back to Hopewell, where Eric had very quickly managed to get another city car. He’d refused to go to a hospital to be checked out, of course, but Garvey had given him an order—the city’s insurance demanded it—and he’d given in with bad grace. Garvey had also offered to arrange for a new rental car for her, but he also said he thought her Jag would be released tomorrow and he’d be happy to take her anywhere she needed to go until then. She declined the rental car. Who was she kidding? She’d been running from this for days, and the time for running was over.

Jaclyn walked into the kitchen and reached into a cabinet for a bag of decaf coffee. It was late, it had been a long day, but there wasn’t any way she’d be going to bed anytime soon. She was absolutely too wired to sleep. She intended to just sit here, in her home, and
be
. It was over.

She was measuring the coffee into the filter when her doorbell rang. Mom, she thought, because of course she’d called Madelyn and given her the lowdown on everything. But when she looked through the peephole, it wasn’t Madelyn on her doorstep. She opened the door and stepped aside so Eric could enter. He had on a clean shirt, and butterfly bandages closed the cuts on his forehead and across the bridge of his nose. He had two black eyes. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

Silently she put her arms around him, and his closed tightly around her. Deep inside she felt herself surrender, let go of the fear that had all but paralyzed her life. She’d been fighting this since she’d run into him at city hall, and she wasn’t fighting it a second longer. There was something real between them, and she wanted to find out what it was, where it might lead them. Maybe they’d had a rocky start, but he’d saved her life; without hesitating, he’d rammed his car into Taite’s, put his life in jeopardy to save hers. How much more trustworthy could a man get? He was a good guy, her own Studly Do-Right. Hell, all he needed was a white hat.

She eased away from him, tried to think. It was so hard to know what to say to make this right. She’d been pushing him away for days: falling for him, holding on to him, then pushing as if her life depended on it. She didn’t want to push anymore. This could be an important moment, a turning point in her life, and she didn’t want to screw it up. She didn’t have a plan for this, no chart, no neat list to check off.

“You snore a little,” she finally said. “That might take some getting used to, but I’m willing to give it a shot.”

His eyebrows rose, a bit. “You make the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted in my life, but you’re worth the pain.”

Her head jerked up. “I do not!”

He looped his arms around her waist. “Yes, you do. I spit it out. What the hell was that shit, anyway?”

“Hazelnut raspberry. It’s one of my favorites.” Well, not really. She could tolerate it, but mostly she’d just been using up what was in the bag. He could find that out later, though. But she really did like flavored coffee, just not that particular one.

She couldn’t help but smile. “I work really strange hours, some days.”

“So do I.”

“Lots of weekends.”

“Ditto.”

She laid her head on his chest, listening to the sturdy thumping of his heartbeat. He held her tightly, but she could feel the difference in the way he held her, the very subtle shifting of his body. Already, she knew him surprisingly well.

“Sore?” she asked.

“Some,” he admitted grudgingly. So like a man, not to want to confess that a car wreck might’ve left him less than one hundred percent.

It was a flaw, but one she could live with. “Poor baby. How about a nice, hot soak in the tub?”

Oh, she liked that sigh. The one that came from deep inside, that revealed without a word that he was affected. “Only if you’ll soak with me.”

Jaclyn smiled and rose up on her toes to kiss him. “Sounds good to me.”

Eric just wanted a decent cup of coffee. Coffee that didn’t taste like chocolate, or hazelnut, or—he still could hardly believe it—crème brûlée. A fine dessert when served with coffee, but damned if he wanted that taste
in
his coffee. Still, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Turned out that god-awful swill from the first time had been a onetime thing.

It had been a couple of weeks since Taite Boyne had been arrested and had rolled on the senator. The case had fallen together perfectly, piece by piece. Of course, the resulting press had been epic. The paperwork had been epic. But things were settling down, and even his personal life seemed to be in order.

He was all but living with Jaclyn. At least, he had a toothbrush and a change of clothes at her place, and he was there more nights than not. She even had him watching HGTV, though to be fair they didn’t spend a lot of time in front of the television. Soon enough they’d make the living arrangements full time—he could see it coming, wanted it surprisingly badly. By fall, Christmas at the latest, they might as well get married. He’d let Jaclyn do all the planning.

The arrangement was almost perfect. He hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to confiscate her coffee and take command of her coffeepot; she kept thinking he would grow to love chocolate-flavored coffee in the morning, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. He loved her, more than a little. Eventually, though, they were going to have a come-to-Jesus talk about her coffee. Maybe his and hers coffeepots were in order. Surely she’d let him keep a can of Maxwell House in the cabinet.

But for now, he wondered if it was safe to stop somewhere and buy a cup of coffee. He hadn’t dared try it, but maybe that particular streak of bad luck was behind him. Still, he didn’t want to go to the Mickey D’s drive-through, and the gas station/convenience store was off-limits. Jaclyn had been bragging about Claire’s, and he thought he could kill two birds with one stone. Muffins for Jaclyn, a cup of decent coffee for himself, and brownie points for bringing her the muffins.

Naturally, a place like Claire’s didn’t have a drive-through, so he had to go inside. He glanced around, liking what he saw. Plants—either real or very good fakes. Little round tables and uncomfortable-looking chairs. Gentle, unobtrusive music played through hidden speakers. Best of all, middle-aged, nicely dressed people—mostly women—were sipping coffee and nibbling at muffins. Couples talked and ate. Women chatted. One woman sat alone and read a book, another was on her laptop. What could be safer? This was not the kind of place where he had to duck behind a stack of motor oil.

Eric ordered his coffee and a half dozen muffins. Different flavors, since he didn’t know exactly what Jaclyn’s favorite was. He fantasized about feeding them to her, one pinch at a time. The woman behind the counter was handing over his coffee—he didn’t even have the muffins yet—when the door chime signaled a new arrival. The cashier who’d just released his coffee cup turned white, and she stepped back so abruptly she crashed into the coffeemaker.

An angry voice split the silence. “You bitch! I knew I’d find you here!”

Eric glanced over his shoulder. Then he closed his eyes and dropped his head forward. “Oh, shit, not again!”

About the Author

L
INDA
H
OWARD
is the award-winning author of many
New York Times
bestsellers, including
Ice, Burn, Death Angel, Up Close and Dangerous
, and
Drop Dead Gorgeous
. She also writes a paranormal romance series with Linda Winstead Jones. They have recently published
Blood Born
. She lives in Alabama with her husband and golden retriever.

Veil of Night
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Linda Howington

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52196-5

www.ballantinebooks.com

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