Still Lake (9 page)

He hadn't wanted a soft, flowery woman to practically have an orgasm the moment she climbed into it. Especially when he suspected that Sophie Davis had never had an orgasm in her life.

He opened his mouth to suggest they take her car, then closed it again. So she liked his car. Obviously she had hidden depths, something to recommend
her. He took one of the ginger cookies and popped it into his mouth. More than one thing to recommend her, he corrected himself.

She had long legs beneath her flowered skirt, and he closed the door, feeling like a damned footman. She'd settled into the leather like a kitten on a blanket. He wondered if she was actually purring.

He gave himself a shake that was more mental than physical, then moved around the back of the car to climb into the driver's seat.

Her eyes were still closed, and he wondered if she'd fallen asleep. The leather was soft, but not that soft. He stared at her for so long that she finally turned her head and opened her eyes. She had a dreamy expression in them, like someone in the midst of sex, and he realized he was getting an erection just from watching her. He'd never had sex with anyone in the roomy back seat of the sedan, but clearly Sophie would be someone worthy of the privilege. The privilege of the car, not him, though he intended to make it very much worth her while.

He tried to break out of the erotic spell. “It's just a car,” he said, not too sure of that.

“You know as well as I do this is more than just a car.” A sudden frown creased her forehead. “Do you have other classics? I suppose you collect them, have someone fix them up for you….”

“No one touches this car but me. And this is my only one. I have a new car for transportation, but this is…” He wanted to tell her the truth. That it was his heart, his soul, the one thing he loved most
on earth, more than any human being who'd ever crossed his path. “My hobby,” he finished, deliberately downplaying it.

She ran her hand across the soft leather seat, and he could picture that hand running across his skin. She'd look quite glorious, sprawled naked on the golden leather of his wide back seat. And if he didn't stop thinking about that he was going to have to put the plate of cookies on his lap to hide his condition.

“It's quite…” She suddenly seemed to realize what she was doing. She stopped stroking the leather seat, sat bolt upright and blinked, trying to dispel that erotic haze. “It's quite nice,” she said. She took the cookies from him.

He turned the key, hearing the throaty rumble of the motor with anxious pleasure. He put it into Reverse, backing out the narrow, weed-choked driveway with consummate care. “Don't even think it,” he muttered.

“Think what?” She bit into one of the small, wonderful cookies, her white teeth severing it, her tongue pulling the rich flavor into her generous mouth.
Shit, he had to stop thinking about sex
.

“I'm not letting you drive this car, no matter how much you appreciate it. No one drives it but me. It's got too much power for most people, and besides, you probably don't even know how to drive a standard shift.”

He'd managed to get her back up. Not much of an improvement over her dazed, erotic reaction to
his car. Basically everything she said and did was turning him on.

“I like to drive stick,” she said in an ominous voice.

“Oh, yeah? You don't look to me as if you've had much practice,” he murmured. “You strike me as someone who's been cruising on automatic for years.”

He had no idea whether she knew they were talking in sexual innuendoes. If she did, she was staunchly ignoring it. Making him even hotter.

“I don't think my driving experience is any of your business,” she said.

Maybe not ignoring it, after all. “I could make it my business,” he said in a low, seductive voice. “I could put you through your paces. See how you are on short hops, and how you stretch out on long, flat places. How smoothly you shift, and whether you throttle down with a rumble or a purr.”

“Cut it out!” she said, her voice severe. “I didn't come with you to talk about cars.”

“Is that what we're talking about?”

“What else?”

“I thought we were talking about sex.”

“Not likely,” she said. They were already on the road that wound around the lake, the Jaguar cruising perfectly.

“Then why are you here? Not for my charming company, I presume,” he said.

She fidgeted with the seat belt. Her hand kept
creeping toward the leather for a surreptitious caress, then pulling back again.

“If I was looking for charming company it wouldn't be with you. I know who you are and I know why you're here, Mr. Smith.” Her use of his phony name was filled with sarcasm. “And I want you to keep away from my family.”

I
t wasn't the reaction that Sophie was expecting, but then, the supposed Mr. Smith wasn't anything like Sophie thought. He didn't protest, didn't get angry, didn't do more than blink.

“Okay, who am I?” he said in a reasonable voice.

The car was vibrating beneath her, a beautiful velvet hum, and more than anything she wanted to lean back and close her eyes and absorb the sound and the feel of it. Clearly he was a man with unsuspected depths, to own a car like this one, but even that didn't make him any less of a ruthless snake. A dangerous one.

“You know as well as I do that you're a reporter, trying to dredge up interest in the old murders.” She concentrated on pleating the fabric of her flowered jumper. “People like you have no sense of compassion for the victims—it's over and done with. Why do you need to start ferreting around in someone else's pain?”

He didn't bother to deny it. “I would have thought the victims would be past harming.”

“The three girls weren't the only victims. Their
families, the whole town suffered.” She couldn't keep the anger out of her voice.

“You weren't even here at the time. Why would you care?”

“How did you know I wasn't here?” she asked suspiciously.

“If I were a reporter I would have done my homework, found out who still lived here so I could question them. As a matter of fact, though, you told me you'd just moved here a few months ago. Or had you forgotten?”

She couldn't remember telling him any such thing, but that wouldn't prove anything. “That doesn't mean I didn't used to summer here. I could have remembered it all.”

“You were probably not much more than ten,” he said. “And you weren't here when it happened. Don't waste your time trying to convince me you were.”

“So what are you doing here?” she persisted.

“I thought you'd figured all that out. I'm a reporter on the trail of a very old crime. Though why a reporter should care about ancient history is beyond me.”

Some of Sophie's conviction started to fade. “It's unsolved. People are always fascinated by unsolved mysteries. Besides, it had all the things people like to read about—sex, drugs and murder.”

“People usually like money and fame involved in
their murders, as well, and I haven't heard about any missing treasure or famous politician mixed up in it. And who says it's unsolved? Just because the boy was eventually released on a technicality doesn't mean everyone doesn't believe he didn't do it. He was a bad one to begin with—anyone who was here could tell you that. And it makes it so much easier for the good people of Colby to think that an outsider would kill their young women, rather than one of their own.” There was a grim undertone in his voice, one she couldn't quite define.

“Well, there must be some question, or otherwise you wouldn't be here,” Sophie said, not about to be swayed.

“And what tipped you off that I was a reporter? Something I said? Something I did?”

“Common sense. I saw the books in your bedroom—normal people don't have books about serial killers for light reading.”

“Any number of people are interested in true crime. Just look at the bestseller lists.”

“So you're writing a book,” she said, jumping at it. “I should have guessed as much. You probably have a million-dollar advance and you don't care who you hurt.”

He turned off onto a back road, driving away from the lake, an unreadable expression on his face. Not that she dared take more than a passing glance at him. She didn't want to be caught staring at him,
trying to figure out what it was that disturbed her so much about him.

“It sounds like you've got it all figured out,” he said, concentrating on the narrow dirt road. “If you're so good at solving mysteries, then maybe you ought to be writing the book.”

“I don't like true crime,” she said coolly. “I don't enjoy other people's pain. If I'd known about the Colby murders I might have chosen another place to move to.”

“You'd have a hard time finding a town without some kind of bloody skeleton in the closet.” His voice was absolutely without emotion, but Sophie shuddered at the image his words summoned. “There's always trouble behind a bucolic atmosphere.”

“That's a pretty cynical attitude. If you're not a reporter or a true-crime writer, who are you? And for that matter, where are we going?” The first hint of uneasiness tickled her stomach. What the hell was she doing, going off alone with a perfect stranger, one who filled her with illogical misgivings? The Kings would have seen her leave—they could testify if she disappeared and…

“I doubt you'd believe anything I told you,” he said, interrupting her panicked thoughts. “I'm on vacation, and I wanted some peace and quiet. Not old ladies wandering around in my kitchen in the
middle of the night, not uber-housewives delivering cookies.”

“Uber-housewives?” she said, her panic replaced by outrage. “I've never been married.”

“There's a surprise,” he muttered under his breath.

She couldn't very well hit him while he was driving, not and risk the Jaguar. “Where are you taking me?” she demanded.

“I'm not taking you anywhere. You insisted on coming along with me, so you're stuck with it. And if you're so good at jumping to conclusions you should have figured out where we're going by now.”

Sophie looked out the window. “There's nothing on this road but the old Mackin farmstead and the…” she stopped.

“The graveyard.”

Sophie's throat felt suddenly tight. “You haven't done your homework,” she said after a moment. “The girls aren't buried in the old McLaren graveyard. They're down in the village cemetery.”

“I'm not looking for those graves.” He'd pulled to a stop along the side of the road and turned off the engine. The deserted McLaren graveyard was on their right, the white fence peeling and rotten, the grass growing high around the old, sagging headstones.

“Then why are we here? No one's been buried
here in over thirty years—they don't even bother to keep the grass properly mowed. Most people don't even remember there's a graveyard out here. Certainly no one ever comes here anymore.”

“You knew about it.” He climbed out of the car, and for a moment Sophie didn't move. She still didn't trust him. She could lock the car, slide into the driver's seat and drive away. There were two advantages to that—one, he made her nervous. She couldn't believe he'd really hurt her, but a tiny sliver of doubt had settled in the back of her mind.

Two, it would give her probably her only chance at driving his glorious car. He'd left the keys in the ignition, and it would only take a second…

He reached in and took the keys. “Don't even consider it,” he said, his voice expressionless. “You aren't driving this car. Are you coming?”

She didn't really have much choice. She set the plate of cookies down on the back seat and climbed out, following him past the sagging gate into the graveyard.

He seemed to be looking for something, though she didn't have the faintest idea what. He moved through the small graveyard at a leisurely pace, reading each headstone, until he stopped at one.

“I guess we're not the only ones who ever come here,” he said. “So tell me, who do you think brought those flowers?”

She looked down at the headstone. A handful of
bright yellow flowers sat in front of it, wilting from the bright sun. It was the grave of Adeline Percey, who died in 1973 at the age of nineteen. Sophie racked her brain, trying to remember who the Perceys were, and a moment later came up with it. Their daughter had been killed in a boat accident during her first year in college.

“Presumably her parents. The Perceys still live just outside of Colby.”

“Maybe,” he said. “What kind of flowers are those?”

“I don't know.”

“What do you mean, you don't know? Aren't you some kind of Martha Stewart wannabe? They must be fairly common around here.”

“Mr. Smith…” She stopped, furious. “I'm not calling you that phony name anymore.”

“You can call me anything you want.”

“I don't use that kind of language. I don't recognize the flowers because they're not common around here. I've seen them before, but I can't remember where. And why does it matter?”

“It doesn't,” he said.

“Then why are we here and why are you asking me these questions, and what does it have to do with the three girls who were killed?”

For a moment he was silent, glancing back at the neglected grave with its spray of dying flowers.
“I'm thinking there were four,” he said. “Maybe more.”

“Don't you think someone would have figured that out before now?” she said caustically.

“Not when the authorities had a built-in scapegoat.” He knelt down by the gravestone, staring at it as if it held the answers to a thousand unnamed questions.

And Sophie stared at him, finally given the chance to indulge herself.

He was wearing an old denim shirt and jeans, and his glasses had turned dark in the sunlight, obscuring his eyes. Not that his opaque brown eyes gave anything away in the first place. If the eyes were a window to the soul, then his were firmly shuttered.

After a moment he rose, and she could feel him looking at her. “Any more questions? Not that you had any—you've already figured out the answers.”

“Look, I didn't want to come out with you in the first place. I just wanted to thank you for bringing my mother home.”

“And warn me to keep my distance in the future. What did you think I did—lure her to my cave? I'm not here to be invaded by batty old ladies or nubile young ones.”

“I'm not nubile!” she protested.

“I meant your sister.”

“Oh.” The idea was somehow deflating. “Well, I'm glad to hear that,” she said briskly, recovering.
“I'll keep a closer eye on my mother so she won't bother you.”

“What about the brat?” They were almost back at the car. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud, and there was a hint of chill in the air.

“I'll keep her as far away from you as humanly possible. She's young enough and foolish enough to think you're hot, and I don't want…”

They'd reached the car, and she was about to go around to the passenger side when his arm shot out, stopping her.

She turned to move in the other direction, but his other arm came up, trapping her against the side of the car. They were miles from nowhere, on a dirt road that might as well be a dead end, and no one would hear her scream. She swallowed, looking up at him with as fearless a look as she could muster.

It wasn't very effective. She couldn't see his eyes behind the dark lenses, but his mouth curved in a faint, cool smile. “Young and foolish enough to think I'm hot?” he repeated. “I guess you don't consider yourself young and foolish.”

“Not really.” There was a slight quaver in her voice, one she hoped he didn't notice. The only way she could escape from this situation was to show no fear. His long legs were brushing up against her skirt, and she could feel the warmth of his body in the cool air. Too close. Much too close.

“Then why are you so skittish around me? If I
didn't know better I'd say you were downright terrified.”

She didn't move. Not that she could, with his arms trapping her against the hard steel of the car. So much for showing no fear, she thought helplessly. It would be a waste of time to deny it. “You just make me nervous,” she said after a moment.

“Do I? Is it just me, or is it all men?”

She would have shoved him, but shoving him would have meant touching him, and if she did that he might not move, and then what would she do, with her hands on him? “I don't like being pinned against a car out in the middle of nowhere,” she said in her coldest voice.

“Yes, but it's a classic Jaguar XJ6,” he mocked her. “Surely that makes up for the indignity. And you've been skittish since I first saw you. Why are you afraid of me? What do you think I've done?”

His question startled her. “Absolutely nothing. I just don't like—”

“Men in general? Or just me?”

Her fear was abating, just a little, replaced by justifiable anger. “I sure as hell don't like you,” she said. “Now, let me go.”

“Convince me,” he said in a low voice.

“What?”

“Convince me,” he said again. And to her absolute horror he leaned down to kiss her.

It was just as well she had the car behind her and
his arms on either side of her. Otherwise she might have slid to the ground in complete astonishment. She tried to duck, but he caught her face in his hands, holding her still as he brought his mouth down on hers, a slow, deliberate kiss, openmouthed, wet, thorough.