Queen, page 17
Wally Morrow was harmless, but the woman didn’t know that and didn’t care to find out. And Wally wasn’t the type to pursue someone who saw him coming. His job was based on deception and covert observation. Wally Morrow was a private detective who didn’t come cheap.
He dug through his wallet, pulled out his calling card, and slid it in the proper slot, then punched in a series of numbers and waited for his party to answer.
“Hello.”
The woman who answered had a voice that matched the weather in Snow Gap. Frigid.
“It’s me,” Wally said.
“What do you have?” the woman asked.
“Nothing you’ll want to hear,” he said.
“How do you know? I’m not paying you to read my mind. I’m paying you for information. Please continue.”
Wally resisted the urge to hang up on the bitch and pretend later that their connection had been broken. Sometimes he absolutely hated his clients. But he wasn’t in the business to make friends. He was doing it to make money.
“Okay. Here goes.” He pulled out a notebook to remind him of all he’d learned and began going down the list, ticking off the notes he’d made to himself earlier.
“As of yesterday evening, Cody Bonner is the hero of the hour. Single-handedly killed an escaped killer who’d murdered the local postmaster earlier the same day and who had later taken a local woman hostage. One Queen Houston, to be exact.”
The woman made what sounded like a snort in his ear. He continued as if he hadn’t heard.
“As for the woman in question…Queen Houston has a good reputation in this town. Everyone who knows her likes her. They think she can do no wrong. And after surviving being kidnapped, she’s high up on Snow Gap’s list of saints. There’s more. Are you interested?”
“Not if it’s more of the same,” the woman said sharply. “Keep digging. Something has to turn up. I won’t believe that all is as it seems.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wally said. “I’ll call you next week, same time.”
The woman disconnected in his ear without saying good-bye. He shrugged and hung up the phone. With what she was paying him, he didn’t have to like her attitude. But he damned sure liked her cash.
Bubbles from her bath floated up around Queen’s nose as water lapped at the nape of her neck. She stretched full length in the old-fashioned tub, testing her toes against the spigots, and reveled in the warm, soothing water easing the lingering sore spots from her week-old ordeal.
The weekend had come and gone along with a continuous stream of visitors. She had not had a moment’s peace or a minute to herself to worry about the change in Cody’s behavior toward her. Where he’d once given her a wide berth, he now hovered. She didn’t know whether she felt honored or cornered.
She lifted a foot from the water, noting that her once smooth skin had begun to prune, and decided that she’d soaked long enough. Using her toe for leverage, she flipped the switch on the drain, then crawled out of the tub ahead of the swift, receding bubbles.
Shivering now that she was out, she hurried through the rest of her toilette, drying herself and then dusting with body powder in record time. After the last week of visitors and gifts, she had an unusually large assortment of loungewear from which to choose. The sweatpants and matching shirt in a soft shade of blue would serve perfectly. She put them on and made her way downstairs before she had time to change her mind.
It was a heady thing, having a choice of what to wear. Although she’d replenished her own meager wardrobe slowly over the months she’d been with Cody, the luxury of vivid colors and stacks of clothing was beyond her wildest dreams. The ski resort mentality of the residents of Snow Gap had colored their choices of gifts to the point where she would be years wearing out the sweats and sweaters and soft knit house shoes. But more important than the gifts that they sent was the fact that they’d cared.
She plopped down on the bottom step and began putting on her socks. The phone rang, and before she could move to answer it, it had stopped. She figured Cody must have answered it. Surely no one would hang up so abruptly. Leaving her shoes on the stairs for later, she walked across the hardwood floor in search of him, her silent footsteps giving no warning of her approach.
When she heard him talking she started toward the living room with a smile on her face, anxious to greet him and the new day.
“Dammit, Dennis, I don’t care,” Cody was saying.
“It’s no use arguing. I’ve been over and over this with you until I’m blue in the face. I’m not going to leave my family again…not even for Uncle Sam.”
Queen swallowed the greeting she’d been about to give, stepped silently into the room, and did the unforgivable. She eavesdropped.
“Yes, she’s fine, no thanks to me,” he said.
Queen frowned. She thought they’d been all through this the night of her rescue. Obviously she was wrong. It sounded as if Cody still blamed himself for being gone when Virgil Stratton had arrived. And what else wasn’t he telling her? What was it that Lt. Colonel Dennis Macon and the United States government wanted from Cody Bonner that he wasn’t willing to give?
She knew he still went to the base occasionally. His counseling sessions regarding his nightmares were ongoing, though on a less frequent basis than before.
She listened intently, certain that her welfare, as well as that of the Bonner boys, rested on what she would learn.
“Yes, I’ll tell her you called,” Cody said. “But I don’t want to discuss the project again.”
A combination of frustration and longing colored his voice, and Queen knew that regardless of the subject, it was time to interrupt. She suspected it had everything to do with his constant visits to Lowry AFB before her attack and the fact that he’d refused to set foot off the mountain since. It was time to find out the truth.
“I want to discuss it,” Queen said as she walked into the room.
Cody pivoted, the phone still close to his mouth, and knew that she’d heard a lot. “Not now, honey,” he said, and then realized he was still talking into the phone when Dennis decided to play along with his faux pas.
“That’s what you say all the time,” Dennis whined in a falsetto voice. “If you’re sick and tired of our relationship…then just have the decency to say so.”
“Dammit, Dennis. I wasn’t talking to you and you know it.”
Dennis laughed loudly, enjoying the joke at Cody’s expense.
“What’s going on?” Queen asked. “Who’s on the phone? Is it Dennis?”
Cody frowned and turned away as he tried to end the phone call. “Look, I can’t talk now. I’ve said all I need to on the subject. Just get—”
Queen came up behind him and took the phone from his hand before he was finished. “Dennis? Hi, this is Queen.”
“Hey, angel,” he said, his voice softening as he thought of the pretty redhead and what she’d endured. “Long time no see.”
“Yes, it’s been a while. Dennis, can Cody call you back?” Cody reached for the phone, and she neatly sidestepped the motion.
“Anytime,” Dennis said, and caught the fact that she’d probably overheard enough to make her curious. He hung up, hoping that she’d be the one to change his friend’s mind. Cody was perfect for the job at hand, if only someone could change his attitude.
“He hung up,” Queen said, calmly handing Cody the phone. “Said for you to call back anytime.”
Cody slammed the receiver onto the base and then tried to glare. But it was hopeless. The light in her eyes was familiar. It was the look she got just before doing battle.
“I think you owe me an explanation,” Queen said.
“I don’t know what you—”
“Dammit, don’t!” she shouted, her anger hot and instantaneous. “I don’t deserve the bullshit, Cody. I think it’s time you told me the real truth behind your visits to Lowry.”
Cody turned away as he answered, aware that if he looked into her eyes, he would not be able to hide his thoughts. Then he turned back to face her with a deadpan expression. “I was asked to head a project. I turned it down. No big deal.”
“What project? Where? And I better not be the reason you said no.”
The warning tone in her voice was enough to make him look away in guilt. It was all she needed to see. She pummeled him with her fists in halfhearted thumps, frustrated and angry with the stubbornness of the man.
“Dammit, Cody Bonner! How many times do I have to say it? You weren’t to blame. You couldn’t have stopped—”
He yanked her into his arms, stopping her angry tirade with his mouth. His hands spread across her breasts and then slid around behind her back, cupping her rear, molding her to him with a rocking thrust. It was a moment before shock sank in and he realized what he’d done.
Queen moaned and then leaned against him in silent submission as her hands sought warm flesh and familiar territory.
At the time it had been instinct, something to stop her from digging too deeply into his secrets. But when her hands slid beneath his sweater and raked across his back in a tender but compelling gesture to continue, he forgot that he’d started this to prove a point, not drive himself crazy.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he said, pulling away from her mouth, and her hands, and the look on her face. “And I can’t tell you what’s been going on without asking more of you than I already have.”
Queen shuddered as she tried to regain her self-control. Then she closed her eyes and sighed. This had been waiting to happen.
“Yes, you can tell me,” she said as anger shook her voice. “And if you don’t, I can promise you…I’ll find out anyway, and then you’ll be wishing you’d been the one to tell it.”
“Dammit!” He hit the desk with his fist and then spun around, the decision taken out of his hands by her threat. “Okay, you wanted to know. So listen.”
She dropped onto a chair, folded her hands in her lap, and waited.
“They asked me to head a project that would be based up the mountain on government-owned land only a few miles from here. Because of my background and experience, they want me to spearhead and train units of men who are more maverick than military in survival techniques. Each unit’s ultimate purpose would be search and rescue. It’s a good idea, but it would entail periodic bouts of being gone all day every day for several weeks and sometimes even overnight. And I just can’t do that. I can’t leave the boys alone, and I can’t ask you to be any more responsible for me and mine than you already are.”
“Why?”
The single word stunned him. It was a full minute before he could form the answer, and then finally, when he did, it came quietly and with a sudden sense of defeat.
“Because I’ve already asked too much and nearly gotten you killed. Because of me you interrupted a journey you’d dreamed of making all your life. Because of me you were saddled with more children and more responsibility when you’d just gotten free of a lifetime of the same. Because of me you’re snowbound, and I’m scared as hell for spring to come. Because I’m not ready to face the fact that one day you’ll walk into a room and tell me you want to leave…and I won’t want to let you go. That’s why.”
Fury sent her rocketing out of her seat, wondering why men were so dense and couldn’t see past the end of their noses.
“My God! You still don’t understand. Since the first day, I’ve been here by choice. No one made me get off that bus. No one made me take three lost boys up a mountain and wait for a no-good man to come wandering home. No one made me stay. It’s been my choice.”
Her eyes were green and wild with anger, and her hair had come loose from its clasp. He couldn’t tell whether she wanted to slap him or kiss him. He shivered, almost afraid to hope she meant what she said. And then all the fight seemed to go out of her as she continued.
“If you want to head that project, then don’t use me as an excuse. Because I don’t want to leave. I couldn’t if I tried.”
She slumped onto the chair and leaned forward, ashamed that she’d humiliated herself to the point that he now knew how she felt about him, and buried her face in her hands.
And then he tilted her face, pinning her with a look from his burning blue eyes that promised more than she dared to hope for.
“I love you, Queen,” he said softly. “I don’t know whether you’re ready to hear it or not, but I’ve kept it inside me too damned long as it is.”
“Then I think it’s time you proved it,” she said. “Because I’ve been waiting for a sign that would tell me I mattered in your world, Cody Bonner.”
He stood, pulling her to her feet, and into his embrace. “It’s been there all along, lady,” he whispered. “You were too afraid to look.”
Chapter 12
Queen sighed in Cody’s arms, trying to think of a way to respond to his words as he swept her off her feet and carried her into his bedroom.
“Oh, I saw the signs. But I couldn’t bring myself to believe them. And it’s not that I don’t want you. A woman would be a fool not to love you, Cody Bonner.”
She tilted her chin, aware that she was leaving herself open to all kinds of rejection just by the admission. “It’s just that I never expected anything to come of it.”
“Why the hell not? I’ve done everything but take out an ad in the paper about how I feel about you,” Cody said.
“Because of who I am…and who you are. You only know me now, the woman who was on her way to somewhere else. You don’t know the gambler’s daughter from Cradle Creek, Tennessee. You don’t understand what a gap there is between your world and mine. Where I lived…” She trailed off, her lips tightening at the old, ugly memories. “You don’t know how I lived…what we had to do to survive. You fly high-tech planes with computer systems I could never understand. I cleaned house for the owner of the coal mine back home.”
‘You think that changes how I feel about you? You’ve got a bullshit opinion of me, and men in general, don’t you, lady?”
Her face crumpled. Cody should have known, the moment he’d gotten angry, that it had been the wrong thing to do.
“Oh, hell,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair. “Don’t cry. For God’s sake, don’t cry. If you aren’t ready, I’m not insisting. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you. I never was any good at saying the right thing to a woman.”
It was the fear on his face that made the difference. If he loved her enough to back off, then she had to be brave enough to take that first step and do something she’d sworn never to do…trust a man.
“You already said the right thing, Cody. You said you loved me.”
“Then what is it, honey?” he asked, wanting to touch her but afraid to move. “I’ll do anything to make you happy. If this feels wrong…if you’re not ready for this…then please, don’t turn away from me. Just tell me. As much as I want you, I’d rather stop right now than take the chance of losing you.”
She started to cry.
“Jesus!” Cody said. He started forward but was stopped by the look on her face. “Baby…don’t.” He held up his hands and started backing out of the room. “Look! I’m leaving. No pressure. No problem.”
“So help me, God,” Queen whispered, “if you walk out on me now, Cody Bonner, I’ll never forgive you.”
He stopped in midstride, stunned by the impact of her words. He’d imagined it was fear that had made her cry, not joy.
“Hell, lady,” he growled, starting toward her, “you scared me half to death. I thought you hated my guts.”
“Only once,” she whispered, taking his hands and guiding them beneath her sweater, “right after you dragged me through the oil and out from under your old red truck.”
He grinned at her audacity and then inhaled slowly and in wonder at the intoxicating, satiny texture of her breasts and the life racing just beneath the surface of her skin. His fingers splayed across her, cupping, caressing, and he felt himself getting hard in response.
Queen moaned, her knees weakening as the wanting of Cody Bonner came upon her. She slid her fingers along the waistband of his jeans and started a search of her own, smiling at his swift intake of breath and the belly that tightened beneath her touch.
Cody couldn’t believe what was happening. Moments ago he’d been afraid of losing her, and now he was afraid he wouldn’t get her soon enough to satisfy her hunger. He shuddered as he realized he wasn’t the only one who knew how to play with matches.
In one smooth motion he lifted her sweater up and off, leaving her bare except for the plain cotton bra restraining her curvaceous body. When he would have removed it, too, she stopped him with a shake of her head, raking his chest lightly with her fingernail, tapping at the buttons on his shirt in a gentle reminder that she wasn’t in this alone.
Cody got the message. Queen was calling the shots, and it was fine with him. In seconds his shirt was off and his boots went flying. He waited, a questioning look on his face, as if asking her what came next.
She smiled and unfastened her bra, letting herself fall free and reveling in the flush that swept across his cheeks as he looked his fill.
He swallowed, groaning at the restraint it took not to touch her, and began unsnapping his jeans, delighting in the way her eyes opened wide and then slid nearly shut, heavy with passion. His body throbbed, reminding him that when he came out of the jeans there’d be no way of denying how badly he needed her. His hands dropped to his sides, and he took some slow, calming breaths, waiting for the next passage in the sexual symphony to begin.
He’d understood. Queen smiled, her green cat eyes widening in appreciation, her body humming beneath her skin. She looked at the sculptured perfection of his shoulders and belly and at the spiral of dark hair on his chest that disappeared beneath the wide white elastic on his briefs. She sat down on the edge of the bed, lifting a leg and waving a sock-covered foot in his direction.
