Past Due Read online

  “Always.” And even more than usual with my hormones out of whack from the pregnancy.

  Under normal circumstances, he would have had me naked and on my back on the bed by now.

  “Rafe,” I said, and reached up to frame his face with my hands. His cheeks and jaw were rough against my palms, where he hadn’t shaved since this morning. “It’s OK. It’s safe. Nothing happened yesterday, and we had sex then.”

  He hesitated.

  “Nothing happened last week, either. Or last month. And I was pregnant then, too.”

  “That’s different,” Rafe said. “We didn’t know.”

  “Even more reason to think something might go wrong. Now we know. So we’ll be careful.” I tilted my head to contemplate him. “Maybe you can—I don’t know—pretend to be smaller than you are, or something.”

  That eyebrow crept up again. “How d’you figure I’ll do that, exactly?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t care. Just... please, Rafe.”

  I wrapped my arms around his waist and put my cheek against his chest. The beat of his heart was steady against my ear. I breathed in the scent of him and confessed, “I’ve had a really bad day. And I didn’t think I’d see you tonight. And now you’re here, and I just... need you.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then I could almost hear the sound as his resolve cracked. His arms tightened around me, and he spoke into my hair. “I just don’t want...”

  “I know. I don’t want that, either.” Another miscarriage—a third—wasn’t something I’d wish on anyone. “But I also don’t want to deprive both of us of sex for the next seven months. If the doctor says we have to stop, then we’ll stop. But until then, I want things to be normal. And normal for us...”

  “Is me jumping you every chance I get.” I could hear that the smile was back in his voice.

  “This time I’m the one jumping you.” I was often the one jumping him, as a matter of fact. I guess he was just too much of a gentleman to say so.

  “How about we just call it a draw and get on with it?”

  “Works for me,” I said.

  I had wanted one of those breathless sessions that managed to take my mind off everything I’d seen and experienced today.

  I didn’t get it. He was careful, gentle, and quiet—which was just as well, with Mother downstairs. If I got too loud, she’d probably think he was hurting me—when quite the opposite was true—and then she’d either come upstairs to save me, or worse, call the sheriff to have Rafe hauled off to jail for assault. Neither option appealed to me, so I guess it was probably best that things worked out the way they did.

  And for all that it was quiet and gentle, it gave me what I needed. I drifted off to sleep feeling pleasantly loose-limbed and tired, warm in the cocoon of the blankets, and safe with his arm wrapped around me.

  It was still there when I woke up, curled around my waist, holding me tight against him. The fingers splayed protectively over my belly. He was breathing slowly, deeply, obviously still asleep. Guess I’d worn him out.

  From my eagerness to have sex, you may have thought I wasn’t worried about my pregnancy.

  You would have thought wrong. I still remembered waking up with pain knifing through my body seven months ago. I remembered the agony as my stomach tried to turn itself inside out, and the even more painful realization that I was losing the baby I desperately wanted.

  I knew, intellectually, that the sex we’d had a few hours before the miscarriage had had nothing to do with it. The baby had been dead before Rafe and I went to bed together that afternoon. It had been dead before Rafe came back to town the day before. But emotionally, fretfully, I still went through the same checklist every time I woke up after another bout of love-making.

  Did I have pain anywhere?

  Was I bleeding?

  Did anything feel different in my body?

  Morning sickness isn’t much fun, but when I woke up every day, I welcomed it, because it meant I was still pregnant and the baby was still growing and developing inside me.

  It was too early for morning sickness, though. That wouldn’t happen until I started moving around. Until I got vertical and started brushing my teeth. While I was lying here, before getting up, morning sickness never bothered me.

  But there were other indicators.

  I probed inward. Testing... testing...

  There was no pain. I wasn’t bleeding. I felt...

  I stretched experimentally, my back sliding against warm skin and hard muscle.

  Good. I felt good. Some of my limbs were a little sore, but that was understandable, and not a problem. Nothing was different from any other morning the past two months.

  “OK?” Rafe asked behind me, his voice rough from sleep.

  I stretched again, a little more insistently this time. “Fine. Great.”

  He chuckled and his arm tightened. “Morning, darlin’.”

  “Good morning.”

  I twisted in his arms so I could kiss him properly. One thing led to another, and a couple of minutes later he lifted his head. “Darlin’...”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I moved away. “You have to go see the sheriff.”

  “No,” Rafe said. “I mean, yeah. I have to go see the sheriff. But not at...” He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “That don’t really say eight thirty, does it?”

  I nodded. “Guess we must have needed the sleep.”

  Nothing new there. I slept a lot these days. Staying in bed until 8:30 wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. And yesterday had been a stressful day.

  “Damn,” Rafe said, flopping over on his back and throwing an arm up to cover his eyes. Muscles moved smoothly under the golden skin, and my mouth went dry. The viper tattoo curled around his arm watched me through slitted eyes.

  “Since we’re here anyway,” I said, “it doesn’t matter if we stay another ten minutes.”

  He peered at me from under the arm. “That’s all you figure it’ll take?”

  “That’s all we have time for. If we get up soon, we can go to church with my mother.”

  “And why d’we wanna do that?”

  “The sheriff will be there,” I said. “If he sees you in church, maybe he’ll be less inclined to haul you off to jail later.”

  “You ain’t afraid lightning’s gonna strike and burn the place to the ground?”

  “Hardly.” There were worse sinners than Rafe Collier attending the church in Sweetwater. “If lightning hasn’t struck my mother yet, I think you’re probably safe.”

  His lips quirked. “Your mama ain’t so bad.”

  “How can you say that? She’s cold as ice to you!”

  “She’s just worried about you, darlin’.”

  “No, she isn’t! She prejudiced, and intolerant, and unkind...”

  His voice was still just as calm. “It don’t matter what she does to me. She loves you.”

  “No, she doesn’t. If she loved me, she’d love you.”

  “It don’t work like that,” Rafe said.

  “It should. She loves Jonathan because he’s Catherine’s husband, and she loved Sheila because she was Dix’s wife...” I trailed off. “That reminds me. I stopped by Dix’s house yesterday, and you’ll never guess who was there.”

  “Tammy Grimaldi,” Rafe said.

  I stared at him. “Did she tell you that?”

  “Course not. But I figured it was either Tammy or Satterfield, and you wouldn’t be this excited about him. At least I hope not.”

  I wouldn’t. Nor would I feel the need to tell him about it. “No.”

  “What was she doing there?”

  “Just hanging out, I think. That’s why I called Dix after I found Ethan’s body last night. Because I thought Grimaldi was still there.”

  He quirked a brow. “And was she?”

  I shook my head. “She’d gone back to Nashville. He called you instead.”

  “As you shoulda done.” He reached out and smoothed a hand down m
y arm, warm and hard.

  I shivered. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sure,” Rafe said and wrapped his hand around my wrist. “Now you can come here and spend ten minutes showing me just how sorry you are.”

  He tugged. I tumbled.

  Chapter Ten

  We didn’t make it to church. I felt a bit bad about that, but not so bad that I dragged myself out of Rafe’s arms to get there.

  Instead, we spent another leisurely hour rolling around in bed—once I got around to showing him how sorry I was, it turned out to take a lot longer than ten minutes—and then (when I was sure Mother had taken herself off to see Sheriff Satterfield and the Lord, not necessarily in that order), we spent some time sharing a shower. After that—the romance never ends—he held my wet hair back while I had my usual encounter with the porcelain god after attempting to brush my teeth.

  “Sorry, darlin’.” He lifted me to my feet and wrapped one arm around me while the other reached out to flush the toilet.

  “It’s fine. It actually isn’t that uncomfortable.” The nausea mostly went away as soon as I ate something. And besides, having it meant I was still pregnant.

  He squinted at me, and I added, “You don’t have to apologize. It isn’t your fault.”

  That damn eyebrow arched. “Whose fault is it?”

  Oh. Um... “Nobody’s fault. It’s just part of being pregnant.”

  “Ah,” Rafe said. “For a second there, I got worried.”

  I shook my head. “You were there when this baby was conceived.”

  His arms tightened around me. “You gonna curse me out when you’re in labor, darlin’? Like they do on TV?”

  “Of course not.” I rested my head on his shoulder. “Cursing is unladylike.”

  “Course.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “I’d never do that. I love you.”

  “I hope you remember that when we’re in the hospital,” Rafe said and let me go, but not without a last slide of fingertips across my skin. “C’mon, darlin’. Get some clothes on. You’re distracting me.”

  Good to know. Vomiting is just as unladylike as cursing, if not more so, and it was nice that he still found me attractive in spite of it.

  While I finished brushing my teeth—without the sidetrip to the commode this time—he disappeared into the bedroom and got dressed. In the same clothes he’d worn yesterday, since he hadn’t brought a change.

  “Where were you when Dix called?” I asked, making my way across the floor to the closet.

  He glanced at me, in the process of zipping up the jeans, commando-style. “In front of the TV.”

  “And you just walked out without bringing a change of clothes?”

  He shrugged and went back to tugging at the zipper, carefully. “Didn’t think about it.”

  I turned away. Not because I thought he minded me ogling him, but because ogling him was unladylike—and at this juncture, wouldn’t lead anywhere. “I’m sorry you have to wear the same thing again today.”

  He chuckled. “Won’t be the first time, darlin’.”

  Probably not. I kept forgetting that he hadn’t grown up with a mother as finicky as mine. And his life until he met me hadn’t always been spent within easy reach of a washer and dryer, either.

  “So what are we doing today?”

  “Going home,” Rafe said, picking up the T-shirt from the floor and pulling it over his head. “After I see the sheriff.”

  “You don’t want to stick around and try to find out who shot Billy Scruggs?” I folded my clothes carefully and put them into the overnight bag.

  “No.” Rafe bent to tug his boots on. “I don’t care who shot Billy Scruggs. If I knew, I’d thank the guy, but I don’t care to hang around and try to figure it out.”

  Fair enough. I zipped up the bag. “I’m ready.”

  His eyes slid over me, from top to bottom and back. “You look nice.”

  “You’ve seen this dress before.” I smoothed my hands over it.

  “That don’t mean I can’t like the way you look in it.” He took the bag out of my hand. “You ain’t supposed to carry anything heavy.”

  “This isn’t heavy.”

  “Humor me,” Rafe said and put his free hand on my back to guide me out.

  We had tarried long enough that by the time we got to the Sweetwater sheriff’s office, Bob Satterfield was there.

  Indeed, it seemed he had been there a while, because when we walked in, he scowled. “About time you got here.”

  Rafe lifted a brow. I was next to him, so I didn’t see it, but I know he did. It was written all over his drawl. “I didn’t realize we had a hard appointment, Sheriff.”

  “Morning,” the sheriff said tightly. “You said you were gonna be here this morning.”

  I glanced at my watch. “It’s eleven.” Still morning, as far as I was concerned.

  Bob Satterfield sent me a scowl of my own. “You can wait outside, darlin’.”

  “I don’t want to wait outside,” I said. “It’s hot outside. And we rode the bike, because my car is still parked outside the hotel in Columbia. Do you know what’s going on with that?”

  The scowl smoothed out. “I heard you found the body.”

  I nodded. And swallowed, as an image of all the blood flashed into my mind.

  “That’s gotta be a record, even for you. Two in one day.”

  It was. Unquestionably. “I haven’t actually found that many bodies. Brenda, back in August, but there hasn’t been anyone since.” Plenty of dead people, but none I’d discovered. Not until now. Guess maybe I was making up for lost time with the two-fer. “Do you know if they’ve arrested anyone?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “Not to my knowledge. But it ain’t my case.”

  “Your people were there last night.”

  “The Columbia PD needed help processing all y’all,” the sheriff said, utilizing that most Southern of plurals. “It was either asking us for help, or calling in the TBI.”

  He didn’t look at Rafe when he said it, but I did, and saw my boyfriend’s lips curve. “I’d have been happy to help, Sheriff. I was coming down here anyway.”

  The sheriff didn’t respond, but his scowl reappeared, and deepened. “Take a seat, son.”

  There were two chairs on the opposite side of the desk, and since he hadn’t told me—again—to leave, I sat down in one and let Rafe take the other. “Do you know anything they’ve discovered about Ethan’s murder? The Columbia PD?”

  The sheriff contemplated me.

  “I found him,” I said, before he could question my right to ask. “I hadn’t seen him in years, and I didn’t know him well in high school, but I found his body. It’s personal.”

  And that was apart from the fact that someone was out there with a butcher knife, someone who had murdered one of my former classmates. It doesn’t get much more personal than that. Chances were Ethan’s murder had had nothing at all to do with high school, or with any of the rest of us, but better safe than sorry. The sooner this maniac was behind bars, the safer I’d feel.

  “No,” the sheriff said. “They haven’t made any arrests. According to Cletus, they didn’t find the murder weapon. Cause of death was the stab wounds. I don’t know if they have any suspects. If they do, they haven’t shared it with me.”

  “Did you know Ethan Underwood?”

  The sheriff’s face closed. “I remember him from when y’all were younger. He got himself in trouble some.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The usual kind. Driving too fast. Drunk and disorderly.”

  “The same kind of thing you used to hassle Rafe about.”

  The sheriff glanced at him. I did, too. He glanced back, amusement in his eyes and in the curve of his mouth. “Told you I remembered him, darlin’.”

  So he had. I turned back to the sheriff. “Nothing more recent? He hasn’t been in trouble with anyone lately?”

  “Not that I know of. And he stopped driving so dam
n fast once he grew up a little. Can’t say I’ve seen him for a couple years. The Columbia PD mighta. He lived up there.”

  “Was he married?”

  “I dunno, darlin’.” He shook his head and then turned to Rafe. His voice changed, became harder and less indulgent. “Tell me about Billy Scruggs, son.”

  “I ain’t seen Billy in thirteen years,” Rafe said. “You tell me about him.”

  “Not much to tell. He’s dead.”

  “So Savannah said.”

  “She call you?” It was the sheriff’s turn to shoot me a look. But he didn’t ask me to leave, so I leaned back and tried to be as invisible as I could.

  “Course.”

  Of course. Surely the sheriff hadn’t thought I wouldn’t?

  Rafe didn’t say anything else, just waited for the sheriff to continue. If he was intimidated by being here, by being interrogated—or at least interviewed—he showed no signs of it.

  “How long’ve you been in town?”

  “Since last night,” Rafe said.

  “She call and tell you about Ethan Underwood?”

  “Her brother did.”

  The sheriff arched his eyebrows in my direction, and I said, “Dix was alone with the girls. He couldn’t leave to hold my hand while I waited for the police.”

  “You coulda called your sister. Or your mama.”

  “My mother isn’t very good at hand-holding. And anyway, I assumed she was out with you.”

  “She was. Until I got the call from Columbia. The chief of police wanted to talk.”

  “Are you any closer to figuring out what happened to Billy Scruggs?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, darlin’,” the sheriff said, with a hard look at my boyfriend. “Where were you Friday night and early Saturday, son?”

  “Baseball game on Friday. Got home around ten. Watched TV and went to sleep. Worked out Saturday morning. Picked up my grandma for lunch.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  I could see Rafe’s jaw tighten, but he stayed calm. “Probably could, if I had to. Plenty of people at the baseball game. People at the gym. The staff at the nursing home.”

  I waited for the sheriff to ask for names and telephone numbers, like they do in books, but he didn’t. Instead, he asked, “How about overnight?”