Still Lake - Anne Stuart [64]
14
Griffin laughed when Sophie slammed down the phone on him. His work here was done—she was so pissed off she wouldn’t indulge in a weeping fit. She’d be so focused on her anger she wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking she was in love with him. God knows, that was the last thing he wanted. He’d had women make that mistake in the past, and it only led to disillusionment and bad feelings. At least his former fiancée had been too hardheaded and practical to suffer from those kinds of delusions.
But Sophie wasn’t hardheaded and practical, she was as soft and yielding as her luscious body, and she’d be just sentimental enough to read more into a good fuck than there was. And he didn’t want that happening.
The Kings were already hard at work, tearing up the floorboards around the chimney where the dampness had set in. They’d started their morning with a group prayer, and the mutters about sinful ways seemed clearly directed at their employer. Griffin ignored them. He had a certain fondness for sin, particularly the sin he’d committed last night. The Kings could pray over his soul all they wanted—as long as they didn’t interfere in his life.
Mrs. King was scrubbing the same areas she’d scrubbed yesterday, probably with the vain hope that she could get them even cleaner, keeping her head bowed and her lips moving in silent prayer. She jumped every time he walked into the kitchen to get more coffee, and after a while he took pity on her and decided to take his supposedly satanic self off for a while. He needed a nap, and he wasn’t going to get any peace in his own place.
He wasn’t going to get it up at the inn, either, even though the thought was appealing. At the moment there was nothing he’d like better than to wrap himself around Sophie’s lush frame and fall asleep, but she’d be more likely to stab him. Sophie’s second lesson in the art of lovemaking would have to wait.
He got in his car and headed out, aimlessly. It was an overcast day, still warmish, with the threat of a storm in the air. He could remember those storms well—the pristine blue of the Vermont sky darkening with rage, the wind whipping through the trees, the hail that would destroy crops and even break windows. It usually took days to build up to a storm like that, but he’d long ago lost touch with nature and the weather, and for all he knew a hurricane might be approaching. And he didn’t give a damn, unless it got in the way of what he was trying to do.
His time was running out. He’d rented the Whitten cottage for six months, but he had no intention of staying more than a couple of weeks, three at the most. Time was passing, and he wasn’t any closer to the truth than he had been before, with the possibility of other, earlier murders clouding the issue.
He didn’t feel like a killer. He never had, but that proved just about nothing. The fact of the matter was, he didn’t remember a thing about that night, not until he woke up with Lorelei’s blood staining his body. For all he knew he could have been the one who killed her. Or he might have been passed out, unable to help her as she struggled for her life.
She’d fought her killer. He remembered that much from the trial. He’d brought the transcripts with him to remind him of what had happened. Twenty years ago DNA testing was in its infancy, and no one had bothered to see whether or not the skin and blood under Lorelei’s fingernails matched his. Particularly when he had scratches down his back, anyway. Lorelei was fond of leaving her mark on her lovers, and it gave her a perverse thrill to see her scratches down his back.
The blood and skin beneath her fingernails were more than the remnants of faintly sadistic passion. Her nails, always her pride and joy, were broken from the struggle. Surely he would have had more marks on his body if he’d done that in some kind of drug-hazed frenzy. But the important question was why? Lorelei had annoyed the hell out of him. She’d teased