Hot and Irresistible (25 page)

“Move on out with me and Beau. We’ve got plenty of room for you in the house.” He took her hand. “It’s just an offer; you think it over. I’ll teach you how to drive a boat and fish and they say I’m a right good cook.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” She stood. “I better go. I have to work tomorrow and wade through a mountain of paperwork and you should know I’m really liking the
dad
word a lot, too.” She kissed his cheek.

“See you tomorrow, Daughter?”

“See you tomorrow, Dad.” Heading back to the Cruiser, she felt a little better, a bit stronger. It was good to have someone to talk to. Not necessarily to get answers, but just talk. That’s one of the things she’d miss most about Donovan leaving. They talked about everything. And there were other things she’d miss, especially this time of night, because the man sure was hung. She made the sign of the cross. Prissy wasn’t the only one never getting into heaven.

Bebe took the causeway, turned down Broughton, and stopped for a red light. A red light when there was no traffic was irritating, and she could run it easily enough and not get caught. Some of her best friends were cops. Except she was stopped in front of Magnolia House and there was a light on at the third floor, second window from the left.

Without thinking, because she’d done entirely too much of that today, she jumped out of the PT, ran though the double doors of the hotel, past the night clerk, and up the stairs, taking them two at a time, so she wouldn’t chicken out. Huffing, she knocked on Donovan’s door. He answered in jeans, no shirt, no shoes, and she flung her arms around him and kissed him while undoing her slacks and closing the door. Backing him toward the bed, she kicked off one shoe, then the other, and unbuttoned her blouse. Not breaking the kiss, her clothes fell to the floor along with his jeans and a condom wrapper.

Together they dropped onto the bed and then he was inside her, hard and hot…the hung part just as she remembered…but she needed to remember the rest of him as well. The feel of his coarse chest hair rubbing against her hardening nipples, his muscles flexing under her fingertips as he braced himself over her, her legs at his hips as he took her, his heavy breathing mixed with hers when they climaxed. Making love would never be like this with anyone else, she knew that with every part of her being.

And then she left the room as quickly as she came in. No words spoken and no more kisses, no backward glances. Holding her blouse together in front and carrying her shoes, she darted back down the stairs and out the double doors to her car still running at the light. A young officer with his cruiser lights flashing stood by her car with a what-the-hell’s-this look on his face.

“Booty call,” she said as she climbed in. She started to cry, but the big smile on the young guy’s face made her laugh through her tears. The cop would have this story all over the station by morning, heck it would be all over Savannah. And that was good. Much better to get ribbed about needing sex in the middle of the night than
you poor pitiful thing, you went and lost your man
. “Dammit, Donovan, why did I have to go and fall for you?”

The next morning Bebe made her way to the station and found her desk, a step in the right direction for getting on with life. She would do the same thing she did every morning. It was business as usual, except today instead of tracking down a killer and looking forward to seeing Donovan, there was a car theft over on Abercorn, someone broke into the Foxy Snoot, and Mr. Garson was peeping in Mrs. Allison’s window again.

Joe Earl parked himself on the corner of her desk. “Heard that Donovan’s leaving and Magnolia House had a late-night guest run through their lobby. So, how are you doing?”

“Prissy said they have openings at the nunnery. I look pretty good in black, we share the same fashion sense, and I can even keep the Hush Puppies. I might give it try.”

“Don’t know if you heard, but we got ourselves a visitor a few hours ago.”

“Tall, dark, handsome? Wait, we just had one of those and it didn’t end well, least for me it didn’t. Can I have a blond this time?”

Joe Earl ran his fingers through his crew cut. “If you thought yesterday was a crazy day, just wait. We’re in for a repeat performance. I’m considering dumping a fifth of gin in the water cooler. We’re going to need it. Your daddy’s here and you’re not going to like what he has to say.”

D
onovan closed the door of the hotel room behind him. He stopped for a second, picturing Bebe jumping into his arms when he’d opened it the night before. Some people brought home memories of the beach and meeting Paula Deen back from Savannah, he had memories of ugly suits, a rusted car, and the most beautiful, exciting woman he’d ever laid eyes on. He straightened the picture of Robert E. Lee in the hallway just as he’d done every day since he’d checked into Magnolia House, then added a little salute. “Take care of the place now, you hear.”

Bypassing the elevator he opted for the stairway with white-spindled rails and brass sconces to the main floor. He put down his duffel by the reception desk, Charlotte offering him a good-morning smile. “You know there’s been nothing but trouble since you walked in our door two weeks ago, Yank. Thanks for that. Don’t know if we would have ever found that necklace without you around to stir things up and you sure stirred things plenty.”

“It’s been a heck of a ride.” He signed the check-out papers. “Take care of Bebe, okay?”

“Always have, and you watch out for Oglethorpe Square. I just sent a bunch of tourists that way, they’ll be clogging the streets up real good about now, and I know how you love that. And, there’s something else you might be interested in. Ray Cleveland turned himself in at the police station this morning. I’ve had three calls in the last fifteen minutes.”

Donovan felt as if his eyes would pop from their sockets. “Why? Did Bebe call?” He flipped open his cell. “She hasn’t tried to call me. Why the heck didn’t she call me?”

“Bebe loves you, Yank, there’s no doubt about that, but she’s survived on her own all these years without you and will continue on when you’re not around. You really think she’d come running to you with a problem like some needy female?”

“Yes, dammit, I do…except for the needy part.” He took the white rock from his pocket and thumped it on the desk. “It wasn’t just a mindless ritual and an excuse to eat Skittles at midnight. When I say I’m in, dammit, I’m in.”

“Well now I do declare, Mr. McCabe, you are some kind of hero. I didn’t know. No wonder Bebe loves you likes she does.” Charlotte kissed him on the lips. “You’re a good man. I bet you got a little Dixie blood in you somewhere even more than what we were passing around last night.”

“Could be. I’m sure picking up the lingo fast enough. Kind of scary, if you’re asking me.” He grinned and grabbed his duffel. “I’ll let you know what’s going on with Ray.” Donovan tipped the valet and headed the Jeep toward the police station. “Well it’s about damn time you got your act together,” Sly said from the passenger seat. “You are one hardheaded man.”

“I was wondering if you’d show up. Next time I go over a bridge I’m considering pushing you out of my car and getting on with my life. I hope ghosts can swim.”

“You’d be surprised what we can do. So, what’s it going to be, Bebe or Boston?”

“Does it look like this car is heading to Boston right now?”

“Until you heard about Ray you were in dumbass mode and heading in the wrong direction. So what about now? Cop or cupcake? You can’t keep them both, you know. You’re going to have to make decisions and wind up on one side or the other.”

“Go haunt something. It’s Savannah, you won’t have a problem, no one will think anything of it. Hell, you’ll blend right in, maybe even get your picture on one of those Haunted America shows.”

“Are you always this cranky when you’re not getting any?”

“Are you always going to be this much of a pest, and how do you know I’m not getting any? There’s a bridge up ahead. Hope you packed your swim trunks.” Donovan pulled in front of the station, then went inside, rushing up the steps to the second floor. Down the hall he could see Ray Cleveland sitting at Joe Earl’s desk, drinking coffee and bullshitting with the other cops.

“What are you doing here?” Came Bebe’s voice from behind him.

“What’s
he
doing here?” Donovan pointed to Ray. “And what the hell are you wearing?”

“Pants? Blouse?”

“They…fit.” Damn, he’d missed her and he hadn’t even left Savannah.

“Ray’s here and it’s all your fault, and maybe some of my fault, and I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we have to do something because everything’s falling apart. You’re leaving, he’s leaving. I don’t do well with leaving, and Daisy dunked her cast in the water bowl and I had to dry it with the hairdryer, and that really freaked her out. Think of something.”

“You’re making no sense. It must be the clothes. Were you just waiting for me to get out of town to dress like this? You’re looking for guys, aren’t you? Going for a new boyfriend and I haven’t even crossed the bridge.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Every man here drooling over you. Two ran into the wall when they saw you, another dropped his coffee. The dispatch guy’s staring and not answering the phones and you’re all gussied up and—”

“Gussied? They’re never going to let you back in Boston with ‘gussied’ and right now we need to be focusing on him and not my wardrobe.” She pointed to Ray.

He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. “There. It’s your old self back. I’m ready.”

“Watch that old stuff.” Bebe took his hand and led him to Joe Earl’s desk. The cops chuckled and asked Donovan about room service and laying down the law and being an undercover cop. “Nice to see that the Savannah gossips were alive and well.”

Bebe said to Ray, “All right, go ahead and tell him your great plan.” She had the perturbed-daughter expression on her face and if she tapped her foot and shook her finger, Donovan wouldn’t have been surprised. “You have no idea what you’re doing. This isn’t some game, this is serious, daddy.”

“She called me daddy.” Ray grinned like a proud papa, then said to Donovan, “So, how you doing this morning, son?” He reached around Bebe to shake Donovan’s hand. “I see you found a place to hang your jacket. Can’t say as I blame you one bit, thought about doing it myself.” He gave Donovan a manly grin mixed with a hands-off-my-daughter glint in his eye.

“It’s not really all that much of a plan, just something that needs doing,” Ray continued. “And it should work well enough. You see, I just gave myself up to these fine police officers here.” He saluted them with his coffee cup, which undoubtedly had more in it than just plain coffee.

“Give up what?” Donovan asked, glad his jacket hung down over Bebe’s ass. What an ass…and he meant that in the very best way possible.

“I haven’t been there for Bebe like a daddy should all these years while she was growing up and all. I was never around to fix her bike when it broke or her dolly if it lost an arm or build her a tree house or any of those things, but I am in the picture now.”

Donovan shrugged. “So you’re going to build Bebe a tree house? That’s cool. But what she could really use is a new car. Have you seen her car?”

“I love my car, but this is not about cars or tree houses. Just wait till you hear the punch line.”

Ray studied the box of doughnuts sitting on the desk. “It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that I’m right in the middle of this little dilemma with you and Bebe. You left Savannah, or have plans on leaving, because you didn’t want to be part of me going to jail. I appreciate that, son, I truly do. Mighty considerate of you. But Bebe here has a big crush on you; fact is, I’d say it’s considerable more than a crush and if you go back to Boston, she’s going to be miserable…those were her exact words, I believe. So I’m here to confess to illegal gambling. I’m guilty as hell. I did it, I did it all. The roulette wheels, the twenty-one tables, the poker tables, the crap table, even got a nice little row of slots I picked up and they pay off pretty good, too—just ask around. Anyway, I came here and gave it all up and now I’m just waiting to get my confession typed up proper so I can add my John Hancock to it and then we’ll be done and you and Bebe here can get hitched.”

“Are you out of your ever-loving fucking mind? This is serious shit, Ray.”

“You don’t want to marry Bebe? I took you for being smarter than that. She’s perfect for you. Bright and pretty and enough gumption to keep you in line when you’re needing it.”

“We’re not talking a parking ticket here or jaywalking, Ray. This is jail time and a lot of it. You can recant,” Donovan said. “That’s it. Hell, tell everyone you were…drunk. Are drunk. Right now it wouldn’t be a hard sell, the place smells like a distillery. We’ll say you came in here, fell and hit your head, and didn’t know what you were saying. You don’t want to do this, Ray. Why would you want to do this? I think you really are smashed.”

“Not by a long shot,” Ray chuckled, then added a dollop more to his cup from the silver flask on Joe Earl’s desk.

“See, I told you this was big,” Bebe said, looking completely frazzled. “I wanted to deck him, too, and he’s my own father. It’s like we’re making up for thirty years of parent/child combat all at one time.” She faced Ray. “You got to see that I can’t build my happiness on your unhappiness. This isn’t going to work.”

“Now, baby girl, I ask you. Do I look like a man who’s unhappy?” Ray puffed his cigar, sending smoke rings into the air. He took another drink of coffee. “After you left last night, I started thinking what a damn fine life I’ve had and now I can finally do something and make things right for you. This morning I was driving into town to get a haircut and decided to drive myself on over here instead.”

“Oh Lordy, I should never have gone to the Cove last night. What was I thinking?” Bebe sat in a chair and put her head between her legs in hyperventilation mode. “What are we going to do? This is nuts.”

Donovan poured himself coffee minus the silver flask addition and sat down beside Bebe, Ray still yukking it up with his friends.

“He doesn’t get it,” Bebe said, her head still down.

“He gets it, he just gets you more, and he’s not going to change his confession. He is one stubborn man and the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“I think I’ve just been insulted. Joe Earl was right, today is crazier than yesterday and that’s going some. If you told somebody what was going on here they’d say you were…nuts.”

Donovan stood. “Nuts. That might work.” Donovan pulled up a chair across from Ray. He poured Ray more coffee. “These last few days have been unsettling for everyone.”

“You can say that again.” Ray drank the coffee and lit another cigar and Donovan added, “You found you have a daughter, you got held at gunpoint, you were a suspect in two murders, and your son got engaged. Sounds exhausting.”

“I’m holding up.”

“All that’s enough to make anyone delusional, especially someone in their advanced years.”

Ray put down his coffee cup with a solid thunk. “Advanced years? I’ll give you advanced years. I can damn well take you any day of the week with one hand tied behind my back.”

“See,” Donovan continued. “That’s my point exactly. He’s picking fights with the police and thinking he can win. Delusional. Ray’s confession is null and void; it’ll never stand up in court. We all heard him. He’s crackers…though we do have to come up with a more legal term to make it stick.”

Ray grabbed Donovan by the shirtfront, surprising the hell out of him. “I’m sixty, not a hundred-and-sixty, and in full possession of my faculties, and there is no delusion about the gambling going on out at the Cove. It’s for real, every single piece of it, and as soon as we get that warrant you’ll get your proof.”

“Warrant?” Donovan looked at Joe Earl. “What warrant? For two weeks I’ve waited for one and now that I don’t want one it materializes? What the hell.”

Joe Earl rolled his shoulders. “You know that a confession gives us probable cause, demands it, actually, and we have to go for the warrant, we don’t have any choice. Looks bad for the department.”

“And you couldn’t have stalled?”

“When something’s that cut and dried, it’s hard to stall, Donovan.”

Looking smug, Ray let go of Donovan and sat back. He tapped his cigar ash in the garbage can. “And Judge Montgomery is only too happy to oblige, since I decked him the other night. I have to say it was worth it, him threatening Beau like that. Should have hit him twice.”

Donovan mentally banged his head against the wall. He was busting his butt to keep someone out of the slammer who was hell-bent on getting himself in. Not his usual cop role. “This isn’t over, Cleveland. You are
not
going to jail no matter how hard you try.”

Ray propped his feet on Joe Earl’s desk. “I beg to differ with you, son. It is over.” He nodded to Judge Montgomery marching toward them. He had on a black suit and white shirt and was looking way too much like an executioner.

Ray gave him a wave. “Howdy, Judge. You’re looking mighty good today.” He said to Donovan, “This is my final ace and the man had to deliver it personally. You got to admire a man who takes his job serious. You’ve been expected, sir.”

“I suppose I am.” The judge stood tall. “I’m here to deliver a search warrant and I figured I best do it in person to get it right and make sure there were no loopholes.”

Bebe felt worse than the time she mistook the can of cat food for that pâté she got in a Christmas basket. Always read labels. The judge reached into his breast pocket, a surprised expression falling across his stern face. “Well now, I do believe I had that search warrant with me when I left the courthouse.”