Gone From Me: Hearts of the South, Book 10 (8 page)

“That’s good. What’s the ‘but’?”

“Who says there’s a ‘but’?”

“Your tone of voice and the way you’re beating the hell out of your knee over there.” Troy Lee grinned. “So what’s the ‘but’? You decide you don’t want it to work?”

“No, heck no. Not that.” He tapped his knee again. He’d only known this guy two days.

“Bennett, spit it out, man.”

“I’ve got to figure out how to straighten out everything that’s in my head, you know, so I don’t let it screw us up any further.”

“Everything that’s in your head.” Troy Lee nodded, changing lanes and slowing for the red light before the chicken plant. “Like finding out about the infertility, being laid off and losing your dad, all in the space of a couple of months.”

“Yeah. Like that.”

“Yeah, because I can’t imagine any of that messing with a guy’s mind.” Troy Lee actually laughed. “Dude, you’ve got to keep it together in this car, though. You can’t go getting me shot.”

“No worries. I have no intention of getting either one of us shot.” Rob stretched. “I was a little more worried about you getting me shot, what with you being the resident screwup and all.”

“Funny.” Troy Lee shot him the finger, and Rob chuckled. “Any ideas about how to get your head straight?”

Rivulets streamed across the passenger window, the day as gray as it could possibly be. Rob cleared his throat. “I used to talk to my dad.”

“Me too.” Troy Lee fiddled with the squelch on the radio. “I miss him a hell of a lot some days.”

“Yeah.”

“You need somebody you can trust. Not Stringham.”

“Hell, no.”

“Eight hours every day is a long time to spend in a car with one person.” Troy Lee flipped on the turn signal. “Guess we’ve got to talk about something. Might as well be your issues.”

Rob relaxed into the seat and released a slow exhale. “Might as well.”

* * * * *

Rob shifted the sign outside the interview room to
occupied
and closed the door. Brittany Jenkins bent to remove a hair tie from her bag and pulled her blonde hair back into a loose ponytail. She fussed with the zipper on her purse, not looking at him.

He settled in the other chair pulled up at the table and ran through the routine of time, date and case number for the video. With the preliminaries out of the way, he scratched the time and date across the top of his legal pad and smiled at Brittany. “Thank you for coming in to see me today.”

Brittany jiggled a tanned leg. “Did I have a choice?”

“You did.” The immediate animosity surprised him. He leaned back in the chair, his arm hooked over the back. “You still do. You’re not under arrest, you’re not in custody, and you are free to walk out that door at any time.”

She looked away. “You don’t know my mama.”

“Your mother was very concerned about you.”

With a harrumph, she pinned him with a glare. “If she was really concerned about me, she’d let me—”

She bit the words off and fiddled with the end of her ponytail.

“Let you…?”

“Nothing. It’s between me and her, and it doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

He drew out a pause, tapping his pen on the pad. She jiggled her leg faster. Finally, he made a bullet point on the pad. “Can you run me through what happened?”

“Are you kidding me?” She blew out a huff and closed her eyes a moment, but not before he caught a glimpse of frustrated tears. “I told my mama, I told Tori Cook, I told that GBI agent yesterday… How many times do I have to tell this story?”

“Let me remind you that you are—”

“Free to go whenever.” Her shoulders slumped. “Yeah. I wish.”

Elbow propped on the table, he rested his mouth against his fist and waited. The clock over the table ticked audibly, and muffled voices engaged in jocular ragging carried in from the hallway.

Brittany bit her thumbnail and sighed. “I broke my phone. I cut my hand, and my car wouldn’t start. I was going to walk for help and this guy stopped down the road and asked if I needed a ride.”

Out there, in the middle of nowhere, as little traveled as those roads were. Sure. He could see that. He scratched a quick summary.

“He wouldn’t take me to the hospital. He drove us over to Haynes County, and when he slowed down for a stop sign, I jumped out and ran into the woods. He drove off.”

She jumped out, holding the baby, and managed to take her purse and diaper bag with her. Yep.

“Is that it?”

“Why didn’t you go to the neighbor’s?” He glanced up in time to see a disconcerted expression flash over her face.

“What?” She gnawed at her thumbnail.

“You have a neighbor across the road. Maybe you don’t get along with her, but you know her. Why not go there for help?”

“I…” Her throat moved in a swallow. “I told you. He stopped.”

He made a show of looking back at his notes. “You said you were already on the road.”

“I meant the road at the end of our driveway.” She bit her bottom lip and straightened in the chair. The belligerent young woman was gone, and in her place was an uncertain girl.

“That was awful convenient.” He dropped his pen. “I have to tell you, Britt, your story doesn’t add up. If you’re protecting your husband—”

“I’m not protecting anybody. Zeke was at work. Check his cell records. Isn’t that what you guys do?” She reached down for her bag. Fine tremors shook her hands. “You said I could go anytime, right?”

“Yes.” He reached for a statement form and slid it before her. He held out his pen. “Before you go, would you write out your story for me?”

She snatched the pen from his hand and scrawled out her statement, then shoved the paper and pen at him. He scanned the document, barely a paragraph long. “I need you to sign it, that this is your full and true statement.”

With another huff and rolled eyes, she grabbed the pen and scribbled her signature across the bottom. She tossed the pen down, grabbed her bag and rose.

“You have Victoria Cook’s number, right?” He pushed his chair back and stood. “At the women’s center—”

“I don’t need it. I’m telling you, Zeke didn’t have anything to do with it.” She shouldered her bag and stared him down, chin tilted in defiance that didn’t belie the lost look in her eyes. “He’d never hurt Emma. He loves her.”

“Right. He loves Emma and he’d never hurt her.” Rob nodded and tapped her statement against his palm. “What about you?”

Her face paled. “Go to hell.”

She stalked out and slammed the door behind her. Rob rubbed a hand down his face. Yeah. That had been completely productive, like everything else he’d done with this case. When had he ever thought he was cut out for this?

* * * * *

Amy parked next to Rob’s truck, reached back for an umbrella that wasn’t there, and groaned. She’d left it in the coat closet again, guarantee it. Rain poured down the windshield, pounding on the roof. She grabbed for her cardigan, prepared to hold it over her head and make a run for the house. She’d come back out for her electronics later, if the monsoon ever decided to let up.

The car door opened, and she startled before she recognized Rob’s familiar frame. He held his golf umbrella in one hand and extended the other. “Come on.”

He tucked her under his arm, and with her huddled against him, they hurried for the side door. In the laundry room, she shook a few stray drops of rain from her hair. “Thanks.”

He leaned the dripping umbrella next to the door and smiled at her over his shoulder. “I figured you’d left your umbrella in the closet.”

“Are you cooking?” She sniffed and walked toward the kitchen.

“Only if tossing a salad and putting a steak under the broiler count.”

A small bouquet of white lilies and roses on the kitchen island greeted her. Their wedding flowers, because they were her favorite, because they’d been the first flowers he’d ever brought her, because they’d been the flowers he’d given her the night he proposed. Tears stung her eyes, and she touched a finger to one perfect petal. “They’re beautiful.”

“I was going to take you out.” He spoke quietly behind her. “But with the rain and everything—”

“No, this is perfect.” She leaned down to breathe in the mingled scents of the flowers for a moment, then turned to face him. Rain dotted his yellow button-down shirt, untucked over faded jeans. He’d kicked off his leather thongs in the laundry room, and those cute feet she loved peeked out from under his jeans. How could the man’s
feet
be sexy? “This is wonderful.”

“I still don’t know what to do sometimes, honey.” He scuffed a hand across his nape. “What to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” she whispered. She took a step toward him, wanting to be connected to him the way she’d been the night before. “You only have to be you.”

She saw it then, saw the shutdown start in his eyes, his expression. That was it, whatever it was that kept pulling him away from her. Something to do with what he was, what he felt he needed to be.

“Rob, I mean it.” She stopped before him and rested her hands on his chest. Under his oft-washed shirt, his heart thudded against her palm, and his heat permeated her skin. “All you have to be is you.”

He trailed the back of his index finger along her jaw, rested his fingertip at the corner of her mouth. “I want to be what you want. I want to be the man you deserve.”

She slipped her hands up to his nape. “You are.”

“Not yet.” He lowered his head, their lips almost touching. “But I will be.”

She closed the imperceptible distance between them, taking his mouth in a kiss full of sweet longing for what they used to be, what they could be. He cupped her jaw in his hands, and she trailed her mouth along the line of his throat. Letting her lips rest at his clavicle, she inhaled his familiar smell. His arms came about her, holding her close, and she did the same, wrapping her arms around him, resting her palms on his back. They stood that way, for long silent seconds, simply holding on.

* * * * *

Amy closed the dishwasher door and started the wash cycle. Once more, she brushed a finger along the edge of a fragrant rose and bent to bury her nose in the smell. She smiled, shut off the kitchen lights and went in search of her husband.

She found him in the living room, watching the local eleven o’clock news. She paused next to him and fiddled with the edges of his hair. “What are you doing? You never watch the news.”

“Look.” Remote in hand, he gestured at the screen. The blonde anchor, young, polished and perfectly coiffed, reported on Brittany Jenkins’s ordeal. She ended with a description of their supposed suspect and the nondescript gray car. Rob slumped into the couch. “That little girl is lying about what happened, and this is going to bite us on the ass before it’s over.”

“Stop worrying. All it does it steal today’s joy.” She removed the remote from his grip, turned off the television and dropped the remote on the coffee table. With an arm hooked around his neck, she settled sideways on his lap. “You are doing everything you can.”

He looped both arms about her waist. “Yeah, well, it’s not enough.”

“Quit.” She leaned in to punctuate her words with tiny kisses along his jaw. “Worrying.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His quiet chuckle stirred her hair. She relaxed into him and rubbed her palm across his shoulder, down to his pectoral. A slight turn of his head and their lips met, clung. She sighed into his open mouth and skimmed her nails along his nape. He shuddered under the light touch and sought her mouth again.

The lazy kiss went on, the two of them relearning the feel and taste of one another. She’d forgotten how a soft nip to his lower lip wrung a growl from him and how the slow thrusting of his tongue between her lips made her hot all over, made her want to straddle him and take him deep inside her.

His hand traveled from her waist to her hip, fingers digging into her flesh as need mounted between them. Beneath her other hip, he was hard and heavy, even through the denim of their jeans. She shaped the muscles of his chest, palm skimming a taut male nipple under soft cotton. She loved touching him, loved the tight planes of his body, the indentations of muscle, the warm roughness of his skin. How had she forgotten that too?

Mouth still fused to his, she scrambled to straddle his thighs. She cupped her hands around his head, needing this sweetly carnal kiss to go on forever. His hands bracketed her hips, and he pulled her closer, belly to belly, chest to chest.

This was how he had kissed her at the beginning, back when they’d been college kids, when they’d sought privacy in his pickup on a red dirt road. This was how he had kissed her the first night of their honeymoon, in a gorgeous room at a little B&B in Savannah, his hands running up her thighs under her ridiculously filmy nightgown, and before it was all over, she’d been screaming his name.

She moaned, helpless under the memories and this kiss and the exquisite hurt of his hands holding her so tight.

This was how he kissed her when she was sure he wanted her.

He pulled back a scant distance, his chest rising and falling as though he’d been running. She rubbed at his hair, the light-brown strands tickling her fingertips. She stared into green eyes stormy and fierce with an emotion she’d not seen for months. With her body settled over his so intimately, she could feel how badly he wanted her, a match for the aching between her thighs. Eyes still locked with his, she traced his cheekbones with her thumbs then let her fingertips trail down to his neck, over the tight tendons, over the strength of his pulse, to rest at the base of his throat. His lashes fell.

“You still want me,” she whispered, the discovery like a forbidden delight.

He stilled, but didn’t open his eyes, a different tension invading his lean frame. “I’ve always wanted you.”

And like that, he was gone from her again. She sensed him slipping away, as surely as his hands fell from her body, and she framed his face, trying to grab him back to her. Frustration brought desperation to her touch. “Rob, don’t do this.”

“Do what?” Weariness colored the words. Lids still lowered, he leaned his head against the couch.

“Retreat from me. Hide from me.” She wanted to cry. Maybe scream or fuss or
make
him come back to her. “Rob, please.”