Chapter 35 #2
She slid her hands under his shirt in retaliation, palms gliding up over hard muscle, nails grazing lightly. He swore low and reverent, and closed his eyes for a second like he was trying to get a grip and failing on purpose.
Somehow they made it out of the kitchen—half-stumbling, half-laughing—his mouth on hers, her fingers already under the hem of his shirt again.
The hallway blurred. Her bedroom door loomed ahead.
Cream walls, soft blue accents, the pale gleam of the lofty white comforter folded at the foot of the bed.
Reid backed her through the doorway, one hand finding the light switch blindly, curled around the back of her neck as he kissed her. The room washed in soft lamplight.
He walked her backward slowly, deliberately, until the backs of her knees hit the edge of the bed.
Eleanor let out a shaky breath against his mouth.
“Reid—”
“I know,” he said, voice rough.
His hands slid down her sides, over her waist and hips, pulling her against him as if he couldn’t get her close enough. She tugged his shirt free from his belt, fingers slipping beneath the fabric, and he made a low sound in his throat that nearly undid her.
He kissed her again—slower this time, deeper—and she stumbled backward onto the mattress, laughing breathlessly as he came down over her, bracing himself with one arm beside her head.
For a second, he just looked at her. Hair mussed. Camisole slipping off one shoulder. Lips pink and swollen from his mouth.
“You have any idea,” he said softly, “what you do to me?”
Heat flooded her again.
“Probably,” she said, because she couldn’t help herself, “roughly the same thing you do to me.”
He gave a short, helpless laugh and buried his face against her neck, kissing his way down the sensitive line of her throat while his hand slid along her thigh, pushing slowly beneath the denim of her jeans.
“Eleanor,” he said, like her name itself was pushing him past the edge of his control.
She threaded her fingers through his hair, already arching toward him, and his hand found the button of her jeans—
The doorbell rang.
They both froze.
The bell chimed again. Longer this time. More insistent.
Reid dropped his forehead to her shoulder with a groan that sounded like actual pain.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered.
Eleanor stared blindly at the wall for a beat, her brain trying to reboot.
“Ignore it,” she said, already reaching for him again.
And then—horrifyingly—came the unmistakable rattle of a key in her front door lock.
Her blood went ice cold.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “No, no, no—”
Reid lifted his head. “Do you give your neighbors keys?”
“Worse,” she said faintly.
The door opened.
Voices floated down the hall. Familiar ones.
“Eleanor? Honey?”
She closed her eyes.
“Mom,” she whispered. “Dad.”
Reid blinked. “Right now?”
“Apparently,” she hissed. “They must’ve come up from Charleston.”
Footsteps moved across the foyer.
Her mother again, closer this time.
“Eleanor? Your car’s out front. Are you home?”
Reid’s eyes went very wide. “Do they know I exist?”
“They know the District Attorney exists,” she muttered. “That is not the same thing.”
He looked down at himself. At his rumpled shirt. At her camisole, askew from his hands.
“I’m assuming sprinting out the back door isn’t an option,” he said.
“There is no back door,” she said. “There is only the hall, and my very opinionated parents, and my complete and total humiliation.”
Her father’s deeper voice joined her mother’s now, a low murmur she couldn’t quite make out.
She scrubbed a hand over her face, then stepped back from Reid, tugging at her camisole and trying to smooth her hair into something less just-been-kissed-with-intent.
“Stay here,” she ordered in a low hiss. “Do not move. Do not make a sound.”
“I’m the District Attorney,” he whispered back. “I’ve faced murder suspects with fewer warnings.”
“You haven’t met my mother,” she replied.
Eleanor steadied herself, squared her shoulders, and strode down the hall.
Her parents were already standing in the foyer when she reached them.
“Mom? Dad?” she said. “What are y’all doing here?”
Her mother’s brows lifted.
“Well,” she said, sweeping a glance past Eleanor’s shoulder, taking in the jazz, the wineglasses on the table, the second pair of shoes by the door.
Behind them, the front door still stood open to the evening, cool air drifting in from the hill and carrying the faint scent of fresh-cut grass.
Behind Eleanor, down the hall, the District Attorney of Jackson County stood in the doorway of her bedroom, absolutely frozen.
Eleanor swallowed.
This, she thought, was somehow worse than court.
And like that, the evening went from progress to sheer, unadulterated chaos.
Lawrence Harper stepped forward first—tall, composed, silver threaded neatly through blond hair that had once been the same pale gold shade as Eleanor’s.
“Ellie.”
Before she could manage an explanation, he pulled her into a quick, solid hug. Eleanor melted into it despite herself, the familiar scent of his cologne grounding her for one fleeting second.
“Hi, Dad,” she mumbled against his shoulder.
“Missed you, kid,” he said warmly.
Then, over her head, his gaze shifted down the hall.
Eleanor followed it and nearly died.
Reid had emerged from the bedroom doorway. In the thirty seconds she’d left him alone, he’d somehow managed to tuck in his shirt, smooth his hair, and rearrange his expression into one of perfect, polished composure.
Unfortunately, he still looked like a man who had very recently been kissing her senseless in her bedroom.
His eyes met hers over her father’s shoulder.
And then—that absolute menace—he winked.
Slow. Deliberate. Entirely too pleased with himself.
The nerve of this man.
Her father released her and turned.
Reid stepped forward immediately, every inch the charming District Attorney.
“Reid Calloway, sir,” he said, extending a hand.
Her father took it, his grip firm and assessing.
“Lawrence Harper,” he said, in the voice he used for board meetings.
“Yes, sir.”