Whatever odd thoughts he’d been having as his gaze had raked her from head to foot, one element was always there...the heat. He’d sent her adrenaline surging, poured gasoline on those smoldering lumps of coal she thought she’d doused until he fell into her lap in the police station. Hardly a sensuous action, yet somehow it had been. She didn’t want to even think about the feel of his face buried against her stomach, his hand on her thigh.
Didn’t want to think about it but couldn’t seem to stop.
“Well,” Nick said, his curt tone slicing into her thoughts, “you’ve certainly had a busy morning. So where are we off to now? Church? Back to hear more from the Reverend Sampson?”
“No. Now we need to go to the Presbyterian church.”
“Ah, a conversion!”
“There’s no call for sarcasm. It’s where Sara’s grade-school principal goes. Sampson thinks he’d probably remember where they moved to.”
Nick grunted and mumbled something.
“What?”
“I said, that’s a good lead. Any idea where the Presbyterian church is located?”
“Yes, I have quite specific directions.”
As Nick drove, Analise kept her gaze turned away from his chiseled profile, his tousled hair, his hands that had touched her body. Those thoughts were not only dangerous but also disloyal to Lucas. Instead, she focused out the car window, watching the older houses with their neatly tended lawns roll past. Prairieview had the same sleepy small-town atmosphere as Briar Creek. The only real difference was the terrain, the flat Nebraska prairie instead of lushly green, gently rolling hills. But it had the same quiet, reverent Sunday-morning air of home, and she had the same embarrassed, inept feeling she ended up with so often at home.
Amazing. She’d started out the day so good, doing everything right, then managed to get herself thrown into jail and had to ask Nick to rescue her. And Nick thought she was cheating at cards. That bothered her as much as anything. For as long as she could remember, she’d been a little blunder-prone, but nobody had ever accused her of being dishonest
Until today.
Until Nick.
It shouldn’t matter what Nick thought of her, but it did. And that bothered her. Trying to prove herself to somebody like Nick could only result in major problems. She’d seen proof of that already this morning.
Oh, brother! She’d just admitted to herself that she wanted to prove herself to Nick, to impress him, to fly into the face of the storm and beat back the wind. Fat chance.
“All tight,” Nick said, interrupting her gloomy contemplation. “Tell me in detail about your conversation with the Reverend Sampson.”
She looked over at him. His square jaw was set resolutely, but at least he wanted to discuss the good part of the morning. “Bob Sampson remembered June Martin very clearly. She came to his church every week and she worked at the bank.”
“That’s interesting. Did any money disappear along with her when she left town?”
“I asked him that and he said no. Either she didn’t want to push her luck or she got better at hiding her crimes. He said she was kind of a religious fanatic. She and her daughter went to every service, but they never made friends, never participated in social activities. He said Sara was a very quiet, subdued little girl, that June ruled her with an iron hand and Sara seemed scared of her mother.”
“That’s too bad.”
He sounded disconnected, detached, as though they were talking about the mechanical breakdown of a car or something. “It certainly is too bad! Where were the authorities? Why didn’t somebody help Sara? Why didn’t Sampson do something about it? He’s supposed to help people!”
“Hey, don’t get mad at me. I’m agreeing with you. But you’ve got to be realistic here. That was a long time ago, a small town, and what could the authorities do anyway? Did she beat Sara? Did she hurt her physically?”
“She spanked her. Sampson saw her do that in church. And she probably did worse in private. How else could she subdue her so drastically? Remember you said when she was in Wyoming that she’d been, and I quote, a pistol. June Martin had to do something drastic to break her spirit like that.”
He stared straight ahead through the windshield, his profile calm and unperturbed though his jaw was still set solidly, with one muscle twitching slightly as if maintaining that calm was an effort. “I’m sure you’re right, but that was a lot of years ago. Sara’s grown now, probably has a good job, a husband, maybe a couple of kids. Whatever happened to her as a child is over and done with. We’ll find June Martin and she’ll go to jail for embezzlement and you’re going to have to accept that as her punishment for whatever she did wrong in raising her daughter.”
“I can’t believe you’re so uncaring about this whole thing!”
Nick pulled into the Presbyterian church’s packing lot and turned to Analise. “I can’t believe you’re getting so upset about somebody you don’t even know.”
For a long moment Analise stared into the distant, unreadable blue of Nick’s gaze and questioned exactly why she was so obsessed with Sara’s happiness. Obviously it only added to her instability in Nick’s eyes. On the other hand, she couldn’t accept his total lack of concern.
“I can’t explain it, but Sara doesn’t feel like a stranger. It’s like there’s some sort of a link between her and me. I felt it last night when you first told me about her. Then today when Sampson was talking about her, it was almost like I could feel her sadness and loneliness. Like I was destined to find that little girl who has the same color hair and eyes that I do, find her and rescue her from the awful woman who caused so many problems for so many people.”
Nick lifted one eyebrow skeptically.
“Fine,” she said, turning away and reaching for the door handle. “I don’t care whether or not you believe me. I don’t care whether or not you keep working for me. I’ll do it without you.”
“Analise—” He laid a restraining hand on her shoulder, and those tingles started again, her already warm skin warming in a different way, setting those lumps of coal to blazing again.
She held her breath, paralyzed, unable or unwilling to move. His hand slid slowly down her arm, lighting miniature forest fires everywhere it touched, and he made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a moan. Or maybe the sound came from her own throat. Or maybe she only imagined it.
This wasn’t good at all. Okay, it felt good, real good, but she didn’t need some man other than her fiancé making her feel things her fiancé didn’t. Not that she wanted to feel those things from her fiancé, that out-of-control, wildly exciting ride on the Adrenaline River straight over Disaster Falls.
She definitely didn’t need this, didn’t want or need to be attracted to a man who was the embodiment of chaos, guaranteed to create more problems in her life.
Nick took his hand away, and she opened the car door and darted out. He caught up to her as they reached the church steps.
“Analise, I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t believe you. I just have a hard time understanding. I helped raise four little sisters and I was married for four months, so I know what it means to be compelled to take care of someone and worry about them. But—a stranger?”
She stopped and turned back to him. “I’ve always had everything. It’s been great, but I’ve often wondered why I should be so lucky. I didn’t do anything to deserve any of it. And Sara didn’t do anything to deserve so much bad. It’s not fair that I had so much and she had so little. Maybe this is my chance to make things more equal.”
He stared at her for a long moment, his gaze unreadable and veiled. Finally he shrugged. “Whatever. It’s your case.” He looked down at her