Still Lake - Anne Stuart [46]
He wasn’t even breathing heavily. She couldn’t help it, her eyes went to his crotch, now at eye level, wondering if she’d imagined his erection. She hadn’t.
She waited for him to demand that she open the door, and then she could tell him to go to hell. Instead he calmly reached in his pocket, stretching his jeans even tighter across the telltale bulge, and pulled out the keys.
She leaped over to slam down the lock again, but he was too fast for her. He opened the door and slid into the front seat, catching her wrists in one hand and forcing her back into her own seat. “All you had to do was say no,” he said mildly enough.
“I did.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“No,” she said, furious. “Keep your goddamned hands off me.”
“Yes, ma’am. Hands off your mother, hands off your sister, hands off you. Any other orders while we’re at it?” He started the car, and it was all Sophie could do to resist the hypnotic rumble beneath her.
“Leave town.”
“I don’t think so. I’m here for a vacation and I intend to take it.”
“I’ll make your life a living hell,” she said furiously.
“Stronger men than you have tried,” he muttered beneath his breath. He pulled out onto the narrow dirt road, making a U-turn that almost sent them careening over the hillside.
He drove like a bat out of hell down the narrow dirt road, but Sophie was beyond panic, still too profoundly shaken. She didn’t say a word until he pulled up in front of the inn. Gracey was sitting in one of the rocking chairs, with Doc beside her, and they both stared at the ancient Jaguar with unabashed curiosity.
She started to get out of the car, then stopped, unable to help herself. “Why did you do that?”
“Do what? Drive too fast?”
“Kiss me.”
No expression on his face at all. “Curiosity, I suppose.”
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from exploding. “And was your curiosity satisfied?” she asked in her iciest voice.
“For the time being.”
She slammed the car door behind her, hoping the window would shatter. But Jaguar XJ6s were too well made for such indignities. Even with all her force, the door closed with an elegant little thump as she stalked up to the porch.
Griffin was humming softly beneath his breath as he drove back down the narrow drive to the Whitten cottage. In fact, it had been a very productive day. He’d learned three things of monumental importance.
One, that there might very well be a murder victim from 1973. He’d been eleven years old in 1973, and living with his father in California. And if he didn’t kill one victim, he probably hadn’t killed anyone.
Two, Sophie Davis was as innocent as he’d suspected, or else she knew damned little about kissing. He probably shouldn’t have given in to temptation, but it had been irresistible, and he’d wanted to find out what her luscious mouth tasted like.
Her mouth had tasted like honeyed ginger, and longing, and fear. And he still couldn’t be sure why she was so afraid of him.
And three—and what should have been the least important discovery, but for some reason it was making him uncharacteristically cheerful—the virginal Miss Sophie Davis wanted him. And she didn’t know what to do about it.
In another time, another place he’d show her. She wasn’t his type—innocence and ruffles and soft curves weren’t his style. But in Sophie’s case he would be more than willing to make an exception, if it weren’t for the fact that he was here to find out what had happened twenty years ago, not to get laid.
He was a fool to let her distract him. He’d been here two days already, and he wasn’t any closer to getting inside the abandoned hospital wing. Or to remembering what happened that night.
No, Sophie Davis was the very least of his problems, an annoying, irresistible attraction that he had every intention of resisting.
At least for now.
10
“Was that your beau, darling?” Grace asked in a cheerful voice. “Who is he? I’ve never seen him before.”
Sophie mounted the wide front steps to the porch, suppressing a sigh. “He’s not my beau, Mama,