On Pins and Needles. Victoria Pade
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have a lot of friends around town—that’s one thing more that you’ve remembered than you had a minute ago. Keep thinking about it. Did they maybe have a visit from a friend from some where else? Maybe who was here and then gone just before you left?”
“I don’t remember anyone. It was a long, long time ago. Do you remember who might have been around your house when you were twelve? Who your parents hung out with? Go ahead, June, eighteen years ago—tell me what you remember about it.”
Josh held up both hands, palms outward as if to ward off an attack. “Okay, point taken,” he conceded.
“Finally,” Megan said on another sigh.
“But I’m going to need to talk to your folks,” he said then.
“I know you’ll probably see this as my being uncooperative,” she prefaced. “But talking to my folks is easier said than done. They’re on board a ship off the coast of Peru trying to stop the dumping of waste solvents. It isn’t as if I can just pick up the phone and reach them.”
“How can they be contacted?”
“There’s a number I can call to have word sent out to the ship and then my parents will have to contact me when they can.”
“Then that’s what you’ll have to do.”
Just like that, Megan thought. He gave the order and she was supposed to follow it.
But she’d had a lifetime of role models who bucked authority at every turn and it wasn’t easy for her not to follow in those same shoes. Some thing about just the way he’d given the order made her feel contrary.
“I don’t see why I should have to bother them,” she said. “My parents didn’t have anything to do with whatever happened here any more than I did.”
“There’s someone buried in your backyard,” Josh said with forced patience, explaining the obvious and then adding to it. “And in the grave, along with the skeleton, is a news pa per dated June, eighteen years ago. That puts the time of death at the exact month, the exact year that your parents high tailed it out of town. Those are a whole lot of reasons why I need to talk to them.”
“They didn’t hightail it out of town. They left because of a strong social con science and a belief that they could make a difference in the world. Nowhere in that are they the kind of people who would bring harm to another human being, let alone bury them in their backyard and hightail it out of town.”
“Even good people can do bad things under certain conditions, Megan.”
She tried not to like the way her name sounded being said by that deep voice of his for the first time.
“My parents don’t do bad things under any conditions. They wouldn’t even hurt a fly. In fact, if one gets indoors, they chase it around until they can catch it in a cup and set it free outside. They’ve pro tested for the rights of people who are being abused or neglected or treated in any way unfairly. They’re against doing bad things.”
“I under stand that it’s impossible to believe the worst of your own family. But the fact is, someone was buried in your backyard at the same time your parents opted to take to the road. Now that may be circumstantial, it may be purely coincidental, but I’ll still need to talk to them about it.”
“Without condemning them with premature conclusions,” she said as if it were a condition she was applying.
“I’m not condemning anyone and I don’t have any premature conclusions. I’m just beginning at the be ginning.”
She couldn’t refute that reasoning, even though the contrary part of her still wanted to. Besides, she knew when she’d lost a fight.
But that didn’t mean she was just going to roll over without getting a little some thing in return.
So she said, “Say please.”
“Say please?” he repeated, sounding partially amused again and partially in disbelief of what he was hearing.
Then he leaned across the corner of the table, putting his extraordinarily handsome face within inches of hers. They were almost nose to nose and he was near enough for her to smell the lingering scent of his after shave and a sweet ness on his breath as he said, “In case it’s escaped you, I’m the law around here. I don’t have to say please when it comes to this. If you don’t do what I tell you to do I can charge you with obstruction and put your little fanny in jail.”
Megan angled her chin upward in answer.
It was an act of defiance. But what she hadn’t factored in was that that act of defiance also accidentally put her mouth in close proximity to his. So close that it suddenly occurred to her that he could kiss her without much more effort.
And the trouble with that realization was that once it was there in her head, it left her unable to think about anything else.
Until she reminded herself that they were in the middle of a tug-of-war.
“Say please anyway,” she insisted.
Josh smiled. A slow, lei surely smile that was oh-so-sexy and made her wonder if he’d just read her thoughts.
Or maybe he was on the verge of arresting her and looking forward to it.
Then he said, “Please,” in a husky whisper that gave her goose bumps.
She rubbed her arms as if she’d caught another chill, worried that he might see the goose flesh.
“I’ll do what I can,” she finally conceded as if she didn’t have a single other thing on her mind.
But Josh didn’t back away even after he had her word. He stayed leaning across the table.
And the longer he did, the more those thoughts of kissing gained strength. Strength and potency and vivid ness as she began to wonder what it might be like to have him actually do it. To have him kiss her…
Then, abruptly, Josh stood and went to the door.
Megan didn’t move to follow him, to walk him out, because she was struggling to regain the equilibrium she seemed to have lost in those thoughts of him kissing her.
“I’ll need to talk to your parents right away so make sure you get on it ASAP. Please,” he added with the hint of yet another smile.
“I’ll put in the initial call tonight,” she told him without a fight this time because she was locked in her own internal battle against this wholly in appropriate and unwarranted reaction to the man.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”
Oh great, now she was thinking about him touching her, too….
Megan managed a nod as she watched his big hand close around the knob to open the door again.
Then, as if he’d just had a flash of memory, he said, “Don’t do anything to the grave site. I’ll need clearance from forensics before it can be tampered with or filled in.”
Once more Megan nodded, not speaking as she marveled at all he was still inspiring in her even now.
He hesitated a moment as if he had something else to say. But in the end he went out the way he’d come in, closing the door behind him and leaving Megan alone in the kitchen again.
When she was, she breathed another sigh, this one a deep sigh of relief to be out from under the powerful effects of his presence.
And that was when rational thought kicked in again.
Was there anything dumber than getting carried away by a man who not only thought she was some kind of oddity, but who also seemed to think her parents were capable of some thing as awful as killing someone? she asked herself.
No, there wasn’t anything dumber than that.
But that’s what had just happened, hadn’t it? In the middle