Chapter 9
Lakin saw the hurt and the fear on Troy’s face after her declaration of love. She knew he was thinking the same thing she was, that it wasn’t enough. They were slipping away from each other.
Earlier tonight, he’d nearly slipped over the side of a mountain.
He could have been lost to her forever. She wanted to hang onto him like she had when he walked into the cabin earlier.
Like she had every other time he’d come home after a long time away from her.
She wasn’t thinking about the space that she’d told her parents she wanted from Troy.
She was thinking of having no space between them at all.
“I was so afraid when I saw your truck over the side like that…” she murmured, her voice hoarse from yelling at him and at Billy, trying to be heard over their engines.
“I’m fine,” Troy said. “I’ll go into the police station tomorrow and report it.”
“Just that,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to the local police about Jasper Whitlaw.” She refused to call the man her father.
“You need to talk to someone about him. Have someone check him out,” Troy persisted.
“I don’t want to talk at all,” she said. Talking with Troy just led to frustration and disillusionment over their future. She didn’t want to talk or think or worry right now. She just wanted to feel.
Him.
She stepped closer to him now and pressed her palms against the sculpted muscles of his chest. Through his T-shirt she could feel the heat of his skin and the hard beat of his heart. Then she moved her hands up over his shoulders and pulled his head down toward hers.
His beautiful green eyes darkened with the desire already burning in her. “Lakin…” he whispered, his voice sounding even more hoarse than hers.
“I need you,” she said. “I need to feel that you’re alive and well…that you survived…” Not just tonight but that fall as well. Every time she closed her eyes, she imagined him dropping down from the rig into the dark cold depths of the ocean. Disappearing under the water and out of her life.
“I’m alive and well,” he said with a smile. “I’m also aching for you…”
He’d limped when he walked up to her cabin earlier. “I don’t think you’re aching for me,” she said.
He took one of her hands and pulled it between their bodies. She could feel the hard ridge of his erection pressing against the fly of his jeans. “I’ve missed you…so damn much…”
She’d missed him as well, too much to continue to deny herself. Especially after tonight, after he could have died once again. This time, not on a rig but because he’d been trying to catch her stalker. If that was even who it was…
She closed her eyes, trying to shut out those thoughts, those fears.
And he kissed her.
His mouth moved hungrily over hers. She parted her lips, deepening the kiss. As they kissed, they moved together toward the open door to her bedroom. But it was like a slow dance, not the usual frenzy when they first saw each other after a long separation.
Troy didn’t pick her up and carry her to the bed. Instead he moved stiffly, walking with her through her bedroom door toward her bed. When they got near it, they fell down onto the comforter. She felt Troy grimace and heard his sharp intake of breath.
She pulled back, panting for air herself, and asked, “Are you okay?”
He nodded, but his jaw was clenched like he was gritting his teeth. Was he in pain?
“Can you do this?” she asked. “Or will this hurt you more?”
“It’ll hurt me more to not be with you,” he said. “I have been aching for you, Lakin. To kiss you, to touch you…” And he kissed her again.
Then he began to undress her. Every inch of skin he uncovered, he caressed and kissed. He glided his mouth over her shoulder and then along the ridge of her collarbone and down to her breasts. As he drew one nipple into his mouth, he stroked the other with his thumb.
She was the one hurting now, her body tense and needy for his. She tried to touch him, too, but gently, so she wouldn’t hurt him.
But he was so focused on her. He moved his head from her breasts over her stomach to her core. And he made love to her with his mouth. As he did, she came, crying out softly with the pleasure and the release flowing through her.
But it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t close enough.
“Please,” she murmured. “I need you.”
“I need you.”
But he hadn’t. When it counted most, he’d shut her out. She tried to shut that thought off, push it out of her mind. She focused only on him, gliding her hands and mouth over his muscled chest and arms.
It was as if their clothes had dissolved. She’d barely noticed him undressing himself. But now she took advantage of his nakedness and wrapped her hand around his pulsating erection.
He sucked in a breath, then he moved between her legs.
She guided him inside her, arching to take him deeper.
He moved slowly; she wasn’t sure if it was because of the injury to his back or because he wanted to drive her out of her mind.
The slow strokes built the tension inside her again, and she arched and writhed, moving faster.
Then he reached between their bodies and stroked the most sensitive part of her. She came, yelling his name. Then he tensed again, and at first she thought he was hurt because of the grimace on his face. Then his body shuddered, and he filled her with his release.
While they’d made love with all their normal passion, she didn’t feel as close to him as she usually felt. The distance remained between them.
If love couldn’t bridge it, she wasn’t sure what could.
* * *
Even though they’d made love the night before, Troy knew he was losing Lakin. And not just because she was gone when he woke up. He wasn’t even sure if she slept beside him last night.
After he dressed, he went out into the living room and saw her pillow on the couch with a throw blanket. Sometime during the night, she’d left her bed. She’d wanted physical distance between them again.
But she shouldn’t have gone off alone, not with a serial killer on the loose. And whatever Whitlaw really was to her… Father? Intruder? Stalker? Troy had no idea, but he needed to find out.
Yet, when he went to the police department to report the incident on the road last night, he didn’t mention Whitlaw at all.
Last night Lakin had told him not to, and when he’d stopped at the RTA office to make sure she wasn’t alone, she’d reminded him in a whisper to not mention it, that she was going to talk to Eli.
That was good. But she needed to do it soon. At least she was safe at the office with Parker and Spence both there. So Troy would go to his first physical therapy session once Officer Reynolds finished taking his report.
“Billy Hoover filed one earlier this morning,” Reynolds remarked.
“He admitted to running me off the road?” Troy asked with surprise.
Reynolds shook his head. “He said you were already off the road when he rescued you, and that for his trouble, you damaged his truck and ruined his tow strap. He figures you must have been drunk.”
Troy gasped at the outrageous claim.
Reynolds chuckled. “Yeah, I pointed out that it was too late for me to tell now and that you both should have called me to the scene. I know why he didn’t.” Obviously the officer knew who’d really been drunk. “But why didn’t you?”
“Lakin was with me, and it was getting late. After getting run off the road once, I didn’t want to risk it happening again.” Troy didn’t want her to be in any danger. Although until that serial killer was caught, everybody was.
Reynolds nodded. “Yeah, everybody needs to be extra vigilant right now. Keep an eye out for anything strange.”
“I wish I’d gotten a better look at the truck and the driver that did cause me to go off the road.”
“Me, too. That road is too dangerous for anyone to be driving that recklessly.”
Troy’s face heated a bit. He’d been driving recklessly himself to try to catch the guy. “I thought he might have been following Lakin, that he might be who broke into her cabin the night before that.”
Reynolds sighed. “That was probably just a vagrant or a teenager looking for alcohol and made off with some food instead.”
“I hope you’re right.” But Troy didn’t really believe that he was. Or that he would find the intruder at all. Hopefully Lakin would talk to Eli soon.
The officer passed a card across the desk to him. “Here’s your report number if you need it for insurance.”
“Thanks.” Troy didn’t have full coverage, so he wouldn’t be filing a claim. But it made him think of the workers compensation and disability suit Mitch was filing for him to get back some of his lost wages and to make sure his medical bills were covered.
But it wasn’t just the money he was concerned about replacing now. He didn’t want to lose his job or whatever else his supervisor had so very vaguely threatened. When Troy was done with his physical therapy session, he would drop by Mitch’s law office.
As he left the police station, Troy had that strange sensation that Lakin had mentioned the night before, as if someone was watching him.
Who?
And why?
* * *
Mitch’s lips still tingled from Dove’s kiss even though she’d left his office a while ago. He’d never felt like this before and wouldn’t have believed he ever would, especially with someone as totally different from him as Dove St. James. But maybe that was what made her so damn exciting.
“You look happy,” a deep voice remarked.
“I am,” Mitch said, and he looked up from his desk to see Troy Amos walking into his office. Limping actually. The man was obviously in pain. Mitch jumped up. “You okay? Need anything?”
Troy shook his head and grimaced. “First physical therapy session.”
“Hope you didn’t overdo it,” Mitch said.
“I’ve got to get back to work,” Troy said. “But it sounds like I may not have a job to go back to.”
“That’s illegal for them to threaten your employment over a work comp claim,” Mitch said. “It’s only going to make our case stronger.”
“I’m not sure my job is all he threatened,” Troy said.
Mitch tensed. “I have been hearing some things,” he admitted.
“Like what?”
“Like this oil company doesn’t like to pay out for anything.”
“I figured that out already,” Troy said with a slight grin.
But it had to be frustrating for Troy with all the years he and his father had worked for this company. “I’m going to make sure that they do this time, no matter what,” Mitch said. “But be careful.”
In a lot of lawsuits against this company, the plaintiffs had withdrawn their claims. Mitch wondered now if they’d been threatened into doing that.
Troy nodded. “I will. But I’m not as worried about me as I am Lakin.”
“You think they’ll go after her?” Mitch asked with alarm.
“I really don’t think they’ll go after either of us,” Troy said. “Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I think Harrison was probably as drunk as Billy Hoover was last night. He’s probably the one who’s going to end up fired.”
Mitch nodded. “Supervisor on the job site. He probably will be sacrificed as the scapegoat.”
“He should have made sure the equipment was in better condition,” Troy said. “But I didn’t intend for him to lose his job.”
“We’ll see what happens,” Mitch said. But he was definitely going to add some things to the lawsuit to put the pressure on the defendants to settle quickly.
“Thanks for taking this on for me,” Troy said.
“Of course.”
Troy started turning toward the door, but Mitch stopped him. “If you’re not worried about the oil company coming after Lakin, why are you worried about her?” He loved his little sister so much, but he’d been so busy that he hadn’t seen much of her lately.
Troy lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. “I guess I’m just worried because of everything that’s been happening in Shelby.”
“The serial killer,” Mitch said, and his stomach tightened into knots of tension and dread. “We’re all worried about that.” The murderer needed to be caught before he hurt anyone else. He had faith that his older brother would catch the killer.
Troy nodded. “Yeah…”
“Yeah?” Was that really the reason?
But Troy slipped out of the office before Mitch could question him further.
And the lawyer wondered. Was there another reason that Troy was worried about Lakin? Another reason that meant Mitch should be worried about her, too?