Harper watched her climb the stairs and felt a sliding sensation inside his chest. Why had she brought up that homecoming date? And why had he let the memories surface?
He shook his head and forced his mind back to business. If she wanted to think tonight’s phone call was a prank, he would let her. He knew better. It had to have been the same person who trashed the house.
All Harper had to do now was find out what the hell Mike had gotten involved in, and whom he might have crossed. The most likely place to start, in light of Mike’s recent heavy drinking, was Ernie’s Tub on the highway just east of town, the only public place to get a drink in a thirty-mile radius. Harper dropped in there the next day, early in the afternoon. He greeted a few old friends and put out a couple of casual feelers. It didn’t take much. Everyone he ran into there plus at the feed store and everywhere else he went was more than eager to talk about Mike.
Unfortunately, nothing Harper learned told him what he needed to know.
He went by Bill’s Garage and Body Shop to talk to Mike’s boss, but Bill Collier wasn’t in. All three Colliers, Bill, Willard, and Frank, had been called out of town that morning with word that their father, who lived in Tulsa now, had suffered a heart attack.
While at Bill’s, Harper spoke with Mike’s coworkers, but again learned nothing useful.
After school that afternoon, Jason, Annie, and Harper moved Jason’s things into Mike’s old room and turned Jason’s room at the back of the house into a guest room. They didn’t finish until Jason’s bedtime. A couple of hours later, Harper gladly gave up the dubious comfort of the couch for the double bed in the new guest room.
During the next few days, Harper made the rounds in town, visiting old friends, catching up on what had been happening in their lives, and keeping his ears open for anything that might tell him where Mike thought he was going to get a lot of money. He paid another visit to Bill Collier’s garage and body shop, and this time Bill was there.
“I heard about your dad,” Harper said. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s fine now. It was a false alarm. He went home from the hospital yesterday.”
They visited a few minutes, catching up on old times, then Harper turned the conversation around to Mike. He didn’t learn much that he hadn’t already known, except that Bill claimed he wasn’t aware that the official reports of Mike’s death had been falsified as to the time of death and that Mike had been drinking.
That was a subject Harper decided to put on hold. If he confronted the local authorities about it, he would be obliged to get officially involved, and he wasn’t ready to do that yet.
Bill also told him, reluctantly it seemed, that yes, it was unusual for Mike or anyone else to come to work in the middle of the night.
“How did he get in? Did he have a key?”
Bill shrugged. “Yeah, sure. He and Ben Carpenter took turns opening for me on Saturdays. They both had keys.”
One thing Harper did learn during his days of visiting around town was that there was a specialness about Crow Creek that he had missed during his years away. There were just enough new businesses and houses to keep things interesting, yet the old and familiar were still there, too. As for Harper’s old friends, they acted as though he’d been gone only for the weekend rather than ten years.
Even Wild-Eye Willard acted as though Harper had never moved away. Harper ran into him at the café and they shared a table for a few minutes. The brief conversation served to remind Harper that he and Mike weren’t the only two brothers who were as different as night and day. Willard and Bill were quiet, polite men, genuinely nice, both of them. A far cry from their brother Frank. Harper could do without Frank.
But everything else—the town, the welcome from old friends, the bright green of the winter wheat in the fields, the flocks of crows from which the town and the county took their names—pulled at him in inexplicable ways.
Then there was the farm. And Annie. And Jason. The three of them were all mixed up together in his mind. He couldn’t think about one without remembering the other two. And when he thought, he wanted. All of them. It was that simple, that impossible.
During Harper’s days of digging for information, life at the farm fell into a routine. Each day started with one of Annie’s big, home-cooked breakfasts. Harper had forgotten how good eggs could taste when they came from free-range hens. The eggs from Annie’s small flock were the best he’d ever had.
After breakfast, Jason would rush off to catch the school bus down where the road that ran by the house met the section line road a quarter of a mile south.
Jason wasn’t exactly warming to Harper, but the tension in the air whenever they were in the same room was gone. The boy had quit glaring, quit sidling up to Annie to make sure Harper didn’t get too close to her. He’d quit looking through Harper as though he weren’t there. And Jason no longer challenged him at every turn. They actually had entire conversations now and then without Jason once getting rude or offensive. Harper held out a small hope that things would get even better before long.
He could get used to this, he thought, the idea startling him. During the past years, he’d never considered getting married and starting a family, but staying at the farm with Annie and Jason made him realize he could easily grow comfortable with a real home, a woman, a child.
It was the seemingly ordinariness of the “normal” routine they’d fallen into that had him thinking like that. When this was over and he went home again, he’d get his head on straight and realize this fantasy wasn’t for him.
Then the front door would slam as Jason bolted off for school, and Harper couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to have come home when he’d planned ten years ago, and stayed. If Mike had never come between him and Annie with his schemes and lies. If Annie had had the faith and strength to wait for him.
If things had been different, Harper would be sitting right where he was, at the kitchen table. Annie would have been his wife for the past ten years. Their son would have just left for school. Maybe there would be other children.
Normalcy. Exactly what he had wanted for himself and Annie all those years ago.
What they’d gotten had been a hell of a lot different, yet here they were, playing at being normal. Pretending they weren’t strangers.
After Jason left each day, the house seemed almost too quiet until Annie fired up the vacuum or the washer or dryer. When Harper was there for lunch, it was just the two of them, and it seemed that as long as he kept his physical distance, Annie, too, was loosening up around him. It was when he moved too close that things got complicated.
Thursday morning, the day after he ran into Willard Collier, Harper decided to test his theory. Annie, in her green sweat suit and fuzzy red socks, stood at the kitchen sink rubbing a worn pad of steel wool over a grease burn on the outside of a stainless steel skillet. The water was running, and so was the exhaust fan over the stove, so when he walked up behind her, she didn’t hear him. He braced his left hand on the edge of the counter beside her and reached around with his right to set his empty coffee cup next to the sink.
Startled, Annie shrieked. The skillet slipped from her grip and clanked against the sink. The pad of steel wool went flying.
“Easy,” Harper said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s only me.”
She pressed a wet hand to her chest and tried to scoot sideways out of his way. “You scared me to death.”
“I’m sorry.” But he wasn’t sorry enough to let her go, because his plan to prove his theory that she was nervous around him backfired. She was nervous, all right, but what touching her did to him should have been illegal. It was hot. Electric. Intense. He stood there a full minute feeling her tremble beneath his touch before he could bring himself to take his hand from her shoulder.
With a muttered oath, he whirled and found himself staring out the living room window before the fog in his brain cleared, not aware of how he got there.
She’d wanted him. He’d felt it in her shoulder, for crying out loud. At least, that’s what he thought he felt. He could have been wrong. Maybe she hadn’t wanted him near at all. Maybe he’d imagined her response just now, as well as the night he’d kissed her. Maybe she remembered Mike hitting her and didn’t want a man to touch her. Hell, he didn’t know what was going on inside her head. All he knew was that whenever he got near her, his blood pounded, and she made an excuse to back away.
He wanted her like he’d never wanted anyone before. And it was just plain damn foolishness. This was the woman who’d kept his own son a secret from him for ten years. The woman who might want him only because he was Jason’s father. He shouldn’t trust her. He couldn’t possibly want her. He wouldn’t want her.
Too late, Harp, ol’ boy. Way too late. Question is, what the hell are you gonna do about it?
Annie closed her eyes and fought the shudder of need that threatened to swamp her. He’d known. She could tell by the tension in his fingers grasping her shoulder that he’d known what his touch did to her.
She’d been doing so well all week, acting normal, smiling, talking. Hiding her feelings for Harper. Going out of her way to make sure he and Jason had time together without her around. That was what she was supposed to be concentrating on—getting the two of them together, helping Jason make some sort of peace within himself about Mike and Harper.
She was not supposed to have visions of hot skin against cool sheets, of soft sighs and urgent breaths in the intimate darkness. She had no right to Harper. She’d thrown away whatever claim she’d had on him years ago.
She just didn’t know how much longer she could go on living under the same roof with him without shattering into a thousand tiny pieces.
If only she could avoid getting near him, she might make it.
She managed well enough for the rest of the day, but that night when the phone rang just after Jason went to bed, she reached to answer it, and Harper’s arm came around her and he grabbed the phone from her hand. She knew he was hoping it would be the caller again. Forty-eight hours had come and gone, and they hadn’t heard from him.
As Harper said hello, Annie slipped a few feet away, far enough so that she couldn’t feel his heat. Far enough, she hoped, to let her pulse settle down.
Suddenly Harper slammed the receive back into the cradle. “Dammit!”
“What?”
“He hung up.” He started swearing, low and harsh. “The son of a bitch leaves us dangling four days instead of forty-eight hours, then he hangs up.”
Annie had a great deal of experience in dealing with an angry man. Long ago she had learned that life went much smoother if she could placate him, even if she was not the source of his anger. As Harper kept swearing, a programmed defense mechanism switched on inside her. Without thinking she lowered her gaze to the floor. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Hell, no, I don’t want a cup of coffee. I want to hit something. Hard.”
Annie flinched. Her mouth went dry and her pulse pounded in sharp, sudden fear. “There’s a slice of pie left. I’ll get it for you.”
“I don’t want any goddamn pie.”
Her heart gave a lurch. “O-okay. Maybe some h-hot chocolate?”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” His angry growl could have cut through steel. “You’ve had your house broken into twice, some creep calls you on the phone demanding something you don’t even know about, I’m ready to bite bullets, and you’re offering me pie and hot chocolate? Woman, you’ve lost your mind.”
“N-no, I just thought—”
“Look at me,” he demanded.
Annie tried to swallow past the lump of unreasonable fear in her throat, but couldn’t.
“Dammit, Annie, look at me!”
Slowly, she raised her gaze and met hot gray eyes—and froze. Harper! This is Harper, not Mike. Not Mike. The realization flooded her with relief and a sense of freedom she hadn’t known she was missing. As quickly as it had come, her fear fled.
Harper’s eyes widened. “Good God,” came his tortured whisper. “What did he do to you?”
Annie blinked. “Who?”
“Don’t give me that crap. Mike. My dear departed brother. Your late husband. You looked at me just now like you were afraid I was going to literally rip your head off. I thought you said he never hit before that night.”
Horribly embarrassed by what she’d just unwittingly revealed about herself, Annie blushed. “He didn’t. He just…” She swallowed and glanced away. “He just got really ugly when he got mad. Placating him got to be such a habit, I didn’t even realize what I was doing just now.” She could feel his heated glare on her as though it were a touch. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t like being mistaken for Mike. I’m not him, Annie. Try and keep us straight in your mind, will you?”
“I’ve never had any trouble keeping you straight,” she shot back, finally looking at him. “You left. He stayed.”
Harper reeled as if she’d struck him.
Annie gasped and covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes going wide. “Oh, my God, I can’t beli—I didn’t mean that. I swear I didn’t mean it, Harper.”
Harper barely heard her over the sudden ringing of her words in his mind. You left. He stayed.
“Harper.” She reached toward him, then let her arm drop to her side. “Oh, Harper, I—”
“No,” he said, feeling as if he were speaking from deep inside a tunnel. “You’re right. I left.”
“You had to. It was your job.”
All this time, Harper thought, dazed, he’d been blaming Annie. All these years. Never had he even considered his own culpability, let alone admitted it, but it was there, staring him in the face, echoing in his mind. He’d been young and invincible, certain clear down to his bones that nothing could possibly go wrong in his life. He’d taken for granted that Annie would be there for him when he tired of playing the cat and mouse games that kept him pumped full of adrenaline. He hadn’t made more of an effort to get in touch with her because he’d known she loved him. Nothing could happen. Nothing could go wrong. Just one more assignment, because he was good at his job and he knew it. He’d loved the excitement, the danger of undercover work.
What a fool he’d been. He’d been thinking he shouldn’t trust her, when he was the one who’d broken her trust by taking her for granted.
“Yeah, it was my job,” he said bitterly. “But I could have turned down that assignment. I should have. Then I would have been here when you needed me, instead of off God knows where, playing hotshot undercover narc.” An invisible vise tightened around his chest. He glanced at the ceiling and took a deep breath to ease the pain. “All these years, I’ve been blaming you.”
“Because this whole mess is my fault.”
“I left you, Annie. You needed me, and I wasn’t here.”
“How were you supposed to know what a naive little coward I would turn out to be?”
“You were young and pregnant and alone and scared. You thought I wasn’t coming back.”
“You didn’t know any of that,” she protested. “I should have had more faith in you. I should have trusted you to keep your word.”
Finding a certain irony in suddenly trying to take the blame on himself, when he’d always blamed her, he gave her a sad smile. “Yes, you should have.”
Her stricken look made him regret his words. He had hurt her. Maybe some part of him had wanted to, to punish her for her part in tearing their lives apart all those years ago. But he knew he had to get past that, to accept his share of the blame, to deal with today, to look toward tomorrow. There was plenty of blame to go around, and all of it was useless. He reached for her. “Annie…”
With eyes widened, she skittered backward, away from his outstretched hand.
He lowered his hand to his side and made a fist. “Are you doing it again? Thinking I’m going to hurt you? Confusing me with Mike?”
Her sharp bark of bitter laughter surprised him. “No. Believe me, I know the difference.”
“Then I have to assume you simply don’t want me to touch you.” The words, the obvious truth in them, tasted sour on his tongue.
Again, she looked stricken. She hugged her arms around herself and closed her eyes. “It’s not that, Harper.”
“Then what?” he bit out in frustration. “Every time I get within five feet of you, you jump like a scalded cat. What else am I supposed to think? I don’t know what the hell runs through your mind.”
Her eyes popped open and her jaw squared. “If you weren’t so damn blind, you’d know exactly what the hell was running through my mind when you get close to me,” she snapped.
Her actual words barely registered. It was her tone and the anger in her eyes that he absorbed. She was mad! And she was letting him know it. For the first time since he’d seen her at Mike’s funeral, she was letting loose her emotions.
She came at him and poked a finger into his chest. “You think you’re so smart, mister big, bad OSBI agent.” She jabbed him again, fire shooting from her eyes. “You can’t even see what’s right beneath your nose.”
Harper stared at her, transfixed, fascinated at what was happening before his eyes. Here was the real Annie, the one he remembered, full of fire and life. Animated. Beautiful. Breathtaking. “Then maybe you’d better tell me straight out.”
She threw a hand in the air and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “How did you ever get to be a cop? Now I know why you never got married in all these years. Any man who can’t tell when a woman’s got the hots for him deserves to live alone!”
He choked back a bark of startled laughter. “You’ve got the hots for me?”
Her face turned as red as the fuzzy socks she had on. “I’ve said all I’m going to say.”
“Oh, no, you haven’t.” He advanced on her until he had her backed against the kitchen counter. “Don’t stop now. It’s just getting interesting.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
Careful not to touch her skin, he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “No way, lady.” One part of his mind warned him to back away. This was a mistake. Another part was so stunned that simply touching her hair could send heat spiraling to his loins, he didn’t think he could walk away if his life depended on it.
“Harper…”
“If you’ve got the hots for me, and I’ve got the hots for you, what are we arguing about?”
Her eyes darkened to a deep midnight blue. “This isn’t…” She paused and swallowed. “This isn’t a good idea.”
He leaned closer and inhaled. The scent of baby powder went straight to his head like some potent aphrodisiac. “Why not?”
“It just…isn’t.”
“A kiss, Annie.” He leaned closer until he felt her breath against his chin. “Just a kiss, that’s all we need.”
The instant his lips met hers, they both knew he was lying. One kiss would never be enough. The taste of her made him hot, hungry, needy. He slid his hands over her shoulders and pulled her to his chest, aching to feel her against him. It was heaven. It was hell. Because it wasn’t nearly enough.
The tiny whimper of answering need that came from her throat drove him wild. Within seconds his pulse was pounding through his body in waves. She caught fire in his arms, stunning him with the fierceness of her reaction.
She wants me, he thought, amazed, humbled. There was no denying the way she kissed him back, the way her greedy hands clutched at him, the way her breath hitched in time with his.
This was his Annie. This fiery, passionate woman who made his heart pound. God, how he’d missed her. No other woman had ever been able to make his knees go weak and his loins ache with hardness from just a kiss. He pushed his hips against hers and fought back a moan. Her answering shudder tore it loose from his throat.
Too fast. Things were moving way too fast. Harper tore his mouth free and rested his forehead against hers, gasping for breath. “Annie,” he breathed. “God, Annie.” He raised his head and looked down at her.
With her eyes closed, she trembled against him.
“Annie?” Placing a thumb and forefinger beneath her chin, he tilted her head up.
Slowly her eyes opened. The want and need in those blue depths was enough to drown in.
“Are you going to tell me to stop?” he asked, his voice husky, his heart whacking against his breastbone.
She moistened her lips. “Do you want to stop?”
Her tongue, her wet, puffy lips, her question, all drove his pulse rate higher. “Not on your life,” he managed.
Annie stared into hot gray eyes and felt the world shake beneath her feet. Ten years of wanting him, of needing him, of missing him. Ten years of living a lie with another man and feeling dead inside. Ten years of guilt. And now he was here, and he wanted her, and all the guilt and pain in the world couldn’t stand against her sudden need.
She slipped her hands around his neck and stretched upward. His hair felt like strands of thick silk as she threaded her fingers through it. “Then don’t,” she whispered against his lips.
Like a spark to tinder, flames erupted inside her, licking, teasing, tormenting with every movement of his mouth against hers, every brush of his hands. Shocked by her own desperate response, she clung to him tighter, pulled him closer, and silently begged for more.
Her message burned in Harper’s blood. The frantic pounding of his heart made his hands shake as he cupped her breasts. When she gasped and jerked against his touch, he pulled his hands away, suddenly afraid that he was moving too fast.
“No,” she whispered fiercely against his mouth. “Please.” She guided his hands back to her breasts and pressed herself against his palms. “Please.”
Emotions, sharp and heavy, hammered at him. He didn’t want emotions. He wanted relief from the torment she stirred in him. He didn’t want to think about yesterday or tomorrow or consequences or a son who might never accept him. He wanted only to lose himself in Annie’s fire.
He left her lips and trailed his mouth down her neck until he met the ribbed neck of her sweatshirt. “Years ago,” he whispered roughly, “I used to dream of taking you upstairs, of sinking myself in you, of loving you until we both lost our minds.” With his mouth against her throat, he slid his hands beneath her shirt and trembled at the silky weight of her bare breasts in his palms. “Let me take you there now, Annie. Let me.”
Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “Yes,” she whispered with a moan. “Yes.”
Her answer shot through him and threatened to send him to his knees. It nearly killed him to take his hands away from her bare breasts, but he did it so he could swing her up in his arms and carry her upstairs.
With some part of his mind Harper acknowledged that Jason was right across the hall from Annie’s room, so he took her to his. Once inside, he pushed the door closed with his shoulder, then crossed the room and stood her beside the bed.
It was almost dark in the room, but a pale glow from the yard light seeped in through the open blinds. Enough light that he could read the wanting in her eyes. He pulled her close and kissed her again. His last rational thought was that maybe he should slow down. That was before she kissed him back.
Heaven help him, had it ever been this good between them before? Had it felt this right? This inevitable?
He stepped back and peeled her sweatshirt off over her head while she reached for the buttons on his shirt. There was no breath left for words, for the pale glow of her bare breasts in the dim light seared the air from his lungs. Creamy white and perfect, with dusky centers that made his palms tingle with want. She was more beautiful than in his dreams.
On a sharp intake of breath, realization washed over him. Despite his denials to himself, in spite of his will, he had dreamed of her, over and over throughout the years. Dreamed of their one night together so long ago. Dreamed of being with her again, touching her, tasting her, losing himself in her heat.
This was his dream. She was his dream. And he suddenly, fiercely, did not want to race headlong into the night with her. He wanted to savor every minute of being with her, every inch of her flesh. Who knew if he would ever have the chance again?
Trembling, she watched him, uncertainty etched in the shadows across her face. He should ask again if she was sure this was what she wanted, but he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He was too afraid she might change her mind. If she wanted him to stop she would have to say so.
But there was one thing they had to talk about. “I didn’t plan on this,” he told her, his chest heaving. “I don’t have anything to protect you with. Tell me you’re on some kind of birth control.” Please!
“The pill,” she managed, her breath as harsh as his. “I’m on the pill.”
He believed her. He trusted her. If she said she was taking birth control pills, even though she’d sworn she and Mike hadn’t been intimate in years, Harper would not question her. He wouldn’t.
“Why?” he blurted out.
Goose flesh rose across her breasts. “For a hormone imbalance.”
He heard her answer, but the driving need inside him made him forget the question. She stood before him half naked, and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why they were talking at all when there were much more important things to do.
With hands that were less than steady, he covered her breasts. His heart thrummed in his chest, sending pulsing waves of heat clear down to his heels. “God, you’re so soft.”
His touch was like fire on her skin, hot, silky fire that burned with fierce pleasure rather than pain. The whimper that came from her throat embarrassed her, but she couldn’t block it. The liquid rush of sensations to her core was too sharp, too startling, too welcome for her to try to temper her response.
With eager hands she returned the touch and was gratified by his answering moan.
For so long she’d dreamed of this without one bit of hope that she would ever be able to touch him again. Being with him like this was a miracle, and she was suddenly greedy for all of him. She trailed her hands down his ribs, down the washboard muscles of his abdomen. The hardness of those muscles intrigued her, but not enough to keep her from venturing down to cup him through heavy denim.
His whole body stiffened at her touch. Behind the fly of his jeans she felt him grow and pulse and harden. An answering heat throbbed and softened inside her, wringing a soft cry from her lips.
Then his hand slid down her body to return the favor, and her knees buckled.
Harper caught her to his chest, stunned by her response to his touch, his response to hers. With the heated scent of baby powder and woman swirling through his head, he took her down to the bed and caught her mouth with his. The force with which he kissed her, the speed with which he discarded the rest of their clothes, made a mockery of his determination to go slowly. It was all he could do to keep from plunging into her in one wild thrust and giving himself the fast, hot release his loins begged for.
She was worth more than that. They were worth more than that. As he stroked her satin skin, he forced his hands to go slow. But when her fingers dug into his shoulders and her silken legs slid across his, his will crumbled. He rolled her beneath him and settled between her legs.
“Yes,” she hissed. “Yes.” Her hips rose against his, urging him to go where he most wanted to be.
He teased them both by stopping just shy of pressing home. She writhed beneath him, begging him with the wanton sounds coming from her throat, with the way her greedy hands clutched at him. Her response drove him wild, and he sank into her.
God, she was tight. It was like the first time, when she’d never known a man before, only better. Hotter. Slicker. It was like coming home, and the unbearable pleasure threatened to shatter him. She took all of him into her hot, silken depths. Need and heat stripped away what was left of his control. He withdrew, then thrust again, harder and faster each time, until suddenly she cried out his name in a desperate voice, her whole body going stiff. He plunged into her again and she went up in flames, her climax stunning him with its fierceness, pulling him over the edge of sanity and taking him with her in a flash of heat and light and emotions that stung his eyes.
As Harper’s mind cleared, he realized Annie was still clutching him tightly, hanging on to him as though afraid he might vanish. Then he became aware of her tears.
He raised himself on his elbows and cupped her face in both hands. She was crying hard, her chest heaving with the effort to hold in her sobs. “Baby?”
At the sound of that name, the one he used to call her, the one Mike had taunted her with for years but that now fell from the lips of the man she had never stopped loving, Annie cried even harder, unable to stop. She had held everything inside for so long, there was no controlling it now. The shattering pleasure he had just given her had broken the last of her restraints and opened the floodgates.