Chapter 11 #2
She moved her hand over his hip, inside the material of his underwear, dragging her fingers gently over his morning erection. She kissed his shoulder. Not only was his body thicker, but his girth, his length… He was no longer snoring.
She wrapped her hand around him and stroked. She missed him, she missed them.
It felt like she was in a relationship with herself for far too long, and she wanted them to be more connected than when they started. It felt like they were less, and she didn’t want that before their marriage, didn’t want this growing distance that she didn’t even understand.
Derrick growled.
“This is gonna end in one of two ways,” the deep husky voice said, freezing her hand and her heart because it wasn’t Derrick’s voice, it wasn’t Derrick’s body.
“Holy shit. Oh my God… Holy shit!” she said, snatching her hand away. He grunted as she released him.
She scrambled out of the bed and landed on the cold hard floor, scuttling back; she looked up at Santiago, mortified.
“I thought I was back home, I thought you were my fiancé—”
“Derrick, yeah I know.” He sat up and swept his fingers through his hair, corralling the strands and putting them in a loose knot at the base of his neck. “You talk in your sleep,” he said, standing, his erection making her eyes bulge more, but she couldn’t drag them away.
“What…what did I say?” she asked
“I often find that it’s not what one says that’s important, it’s what one does.”
Her shoulders dropped.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fondle you, it’s just that, I thought you were him and it had been—” She stopped before telling her enemy that it had been months since she and her fiancé were intimate.
“I don’t care about you grabbing my dick, Lauren,” he said, standing across from her.
She averted her gaze from the still present erection stretching his boxers.
Couldn’t he put that thing away or something?
She didn’t need any reminders about how silky to the touch he felt, didn’t want her mind filling in the spaces around what his dick looked like inside the thin material.
It disturbed her how a lucid dream could change a man from the most dictatorial, humorless person she’d ever met to, well, a full-blooded man with impressive.
..assets. Suddenly, his features weren’t just hard and unyielding, they were striking.
His body wasn’t just a barrier to get around; it was muscular, and warm, and smelled like green earth, frozen water… and it was hard.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, drawing her attention back to his sardonic gaze.
He was looking at her like a woman—like a full-blooded woman—and said blood was rushing through her veins.
Making her skin hot. “I’d prefer you with a warm hand guiding me awake over your mouth arguing for no fucking good reason.
Now unless you’re cooking me breakfast, little wren, I think we’d both agree that it’s time for you to go on home. ”
He nodded at her, then walked toward the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
When he’d opened the door to an empty room he sighed in both relief and disappointment. He didn’t want to admit that he liked her touch, liked her passion. He didn’t want to think about how his mind created graphic images of her while he finished what she’d started, so he wouldn’t.
Dressing quickly, he retrieved his gun and badge and headed downstairs. The smell of coffee and biscuits drifted up to meet him. Entering his kitchen, he saw Lauren sitting at the round wooden table he’d built for his grandfather four years before he passed.
There were two homemade breakfast sandwiches on a plate on the counter. He went to the plate and pulled the top half of the biscuit off. She’d used his sausage patties, fried an egg, and drizzled maple syrup over the whole thing.
“It’s in thanks of letting me crash here and my apology for groping you.”
He made himself a cup of coffee and sat across from her.
“You don’t eat eggs and sausage?” he asked, nodding toward her syrup soaked biscuit.
“Not often.”
Santiago ate silently and quickly.
In the time it took him to eat three biscuit sandwiches, she was still working on her first biscuit.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question, Sher—”
He shook his head.
“—Santiago.”
He sat back and looked at her, waiting. Her tongue licked syrup from the corner of her mouth. Then she licked her fingers.
He didn’t want to feel something, but he knew her touch now, knew how her soft mouth felt against his flesh.
“Do you think the person that killed the Willobys’ mom is done killing?” she asked.
“I’m not having that conversation with you, Lauren.”
“I know, I know, but just hear me out because I’m not trying to be the next one dead. What’s the root of all evil?”
“Human beings.”
She rolled her eyes. “Money. Money is said to be the root of all evil.”
“And who uses money?” he asked.
“My point is, maybe someone thought an old woman in a lakeside house had money. Maybe had some cash stashed away. When we were negotiating the sale of the house, Sherry Lynn said her mother always spoke of a special inheritance but everyone in the family took it as fiction because the Willobys were barely surviving. Sherry Lynn believed if her mother had large sums of money, there was no way she would not help her family.”
“Mrs. Willoby wasn’t the warm and fuzzy type, but I agree. There’s no way she would’ve had money and not helped her family. They were the only people she really cared about.”
“All I’m saying is, have you followed any money trails. And if you need assistance, you’re sitting across from a woman who has made it her business to know money.”
He stared at her. For some reason it was suddenly important to view her as more than the bane of his existence.
“Why are you here, Lauren? And I don’t mean in my house or in my kitchen. Why are you here, in Shrouded Lake?”
She picked up her cup, slowly drinking before setting the cup back on the table. She stood. “You know where I am if you need me, Santiago. Have a good day.”
He followed her out of the house and onto the back porch, silently watching as she walked beside the water’s edge, heading home.
Santiago knew he wasn’t being unreasonable in asking the question, but he also wasn’t a fool.
He knew a woman on the run when he saw one, and from her sleep-time ramblings, he knew this Derrick played a big role in her being here.
For reasons unknown to him, it suddenly became important that she be the one to tell him why.
Whoever said being in nature was peaceful and calming had seriously exaggerated that shit.
For brief periods, sure, she could see it.
Hiking a couple of hours, being beachside for an hour or two, exploring a cave; all of that was wonderful.
Spirit and mind expanding. But she’d returned home from Santiago’s house over five hours ago, and to live in this shit without distraction, without doing anything, her brain wasn’t wired for it.
If anyone who knew her was to see her right now they’d think she was on meth.
She couldn’t sit still, though there was nothing to do. And her mind wouldn’t shut. Up.
She was actually, right now, in her house talking to ghosts.
And damned if those motherfuckers weren’t responding back.
Knocks, movement, cold breezes when it was warm and damp outside.
She was never alone here; she could feel it—unless she went to the bathroom.
She didn’t know how she knew, she just knew that was the only space unseen eyes remained closed.
“I don’t know how you can stand it,” she called out from her seat on the toilet. She’d left the door open because she didn’t want to feel alone in there.
“I understand this is your home but damn, don’t you get bored, don’t you want to know what else is out there?” She rested her chin on her fist. “Could you leave if you wanted to?”
The ensuing silence seemed speculative, filling Lauren with a new sense of purpose. Cleaning herself, she stood, flushed the toilet, and washed her hands with the new rosemary and cedar hand wash she’d bought from Saige. She looked over her shoulder toward the empty door as she dried her hands.
“I’m gonna find out if I can help you move on.
You don’t have to leave of course, but if you’re trapped, I want to help you get free, to help you find your peace.
Then at least one of us can have it,” she muttered as she exited the bathroom.
Walking down the hall she saw a large dark shape outside the screen door.
“Can I help you?” she asked, irritably.
“Who were you talking to?”
“Not you, so why does it matter?”
She opened the screen door, stepped outside, and had to take a steadying breath. Her one remaining ovary must be ovulating because why was this man’s uniform fitting like a designer suit? Hugging his body in all the right places.
Not having sex for a few months was really hitting her libido hard in this mountain air.
“You weren’t answering your phone. Lina’s trying to reach you. Then she got panicked and called me like I don’t have anything better to do.”
She smiled. “She probably thought Deborah got me.”
“Well tonight you should stay in your own bed and give her a chance.”
She laughed despite herself. “Rude.”
“Just trying to protect my peace. You hungry?”
“I mean, I could eat.”
“I’ll drive you into town, Lina wants you to come sample her latest menu.”
“Be back in three!” She rushed inside and ran up the stairs like she was being bailed out of purgatory. Changing into a pair of black jeans and peach cashmere sweater that gently clung to her body, she shuffled through her closet to find the rust-colored ankle boots.
Her phone rang and she stopped to dig through her bag and find it.
Come on Lauren, this level of disorganization is not like you, she thought. She didn’t recognize the number but still picked it up since it was a Tennessee area code.
“Hello?” She slipped on a pair of teardrop gold earrings.
“Five minutes, nearly six,” Santiago said, and hung up before she could tell him what specific crevice of his ass he could shove his time limits.
Collecting her laptop, cord, two battery packs…her portable selfie light and her digital camera, she placed them in her bag and rushed out of her bedroom knowing he would leave her if she wasn’t outside soon.
“I’ll be back with answers,” she called to Deborah. “Hold down the fort!”
She set her alarm and greeted a disgruntled sheriff who was back to hiding behind his mirrored sunglasses. He was sitting on her corner chair, his long legs extended out and crossed at the ankle as if he were an actual patient person.
“You can ditch the attitude,” she said, locking the door and adjusting the bag on her shoulder.
He pulled his long legs in and stood. Too close.
So close it was hard to ignore how her body readied itself for his touch.
Which was crazy. The last thing she wanted to think about was a man’s touch, any man’s touch, but her body didn’t seem to care about what her mind wanted to do.
It keenly remembered the feel of him, the heat—
“You better be real good and goddamn glad that you made me breakfast this morning,” he said as he walked toward his cruiser. “Real good and glad,” he called back.
“Or what?” she yelled, trailing after him, the exhilaration of sparring with him had her walking at a clip, heating her blood.
“What would you have done if I hadn’t fed you before you went off to work this morning?
” She dropped into the passenger seat, closed the door, and buckled her seat belt. “I want to know.”
“Just like I want to know why you dressed like you’re going to some champagne and diamonds brunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant.”
“I have actual jeans on,” she said, looking at him as if he was an idiot. “Besides, once our plans come together, your aunt’s place will be so popular it will be known as the Ritz of Shrouded Lake.”
“Businesses are closing left and right. The people who can are leaving faster than is sustainable, and the people who are staying are either too poor to leave or too stubborn. Those are not the folks who will bring Ritz level prestige to Shrouded Lake, so if you have a vision, I’m not fully seeing it. ”
“You will see it,” she said. “It’s just going to take a lot of determination and hard work.” She looked forward to the challenge. It gave her a renewed sense of purpose.
Once he pulled up to Lina’s bed and breakfast, he watched her curiously, silently, before facing the road again.
“I’ll pick you up at the end of my shift,” he told her. “Please don’t go getting into any trouble before then.”
“I’ll endeavor to do my best.”