“Wheeler,” she supplied as she looked Mack up and down, then switched her gaze back to her daughter.
“You’ve taken up with another detective?”
Jamie answered in a rush. “I haven’t taken up with him.”
“I was a friend of Jamie’s husband, Craig,” Mack said.
Mom’s knowing smile made Jamie cringe. What did she think? That they were sleeping together?
“I guess it was a bad idea coming here,” she said.
Gloria shrugged. “You said it, not me. You too good for Gaptown now?”
Unable to contain her exasperation, Jamie asked quickly, “If you didn’t want me here, why did you write to me?”
Gloria tipped her head to one side, considering. “I didn’t write you.”
“But I got a letter from you last week.”
Gloria’s voice hardened. “Not from me you didn’t.”
Jamie swallowed, wondering why her mother was lying, but she knew from experience that making a point of it wasn’t going to get her anywhere. “I guess this was a mistake,” she murmured. “We won’t take up any more of your time.”
“Suits me.”
Without waiting for Mack, Jamie turned and fled the house. On the porch she took a deep breath. Behind her, she heard him say, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Wheeler.”
Yeah, sure.
Then he was hurrying after her down the sidewalk. When she’d climbed into the car, she kept her gaze down as she fumbled with her seat belt. Her hand was shaking, but she finally got it hooked.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was obviously a mistake dropping in there.”
“Yeah.” He pulled away from the curb, and they rode in silence for a few moments until Mack cleared his throat.
“Was your mom like that when you were little?”
“Like what?”
“Mean. Self-centered. And not much interested in keeping her house or herself neat.”
“She was never much for housework, but she wasn’t so mean when I was little. I think she started reacting to her life.”
“Some people cope better than others.”
“She’s a very dependent woman who can’t function without a man to take care of her. Not that Clark Landon does much for her. My dad drank. She couldn’t leave him either. After he died, she went looking for another man and ended up with Landon, unfortunately.”
She sat tensely in her seat, expecting some kind of cutting remark about Gloria from Mack. Instead he pulled up along the curb, under the branches of a maple tree and turned toward her.
“I understand better than you think. My home life was no sitcom, either.”
That surprised her. “What do you mean?”
He laughed, the sound low and rough. “From what I can pick up on short acquaintance with Gloria, I guess my mom was the polar opposite of yours. When I was ten, she decided that she was tired of taking care of a husband and two kids. One day my older brother and I came home from school, and she wasn’t there. We went looking for her and found out she’d cleared out the clothes she wanted and left the rest for Goodwill.
“There was a note on the kitchen counter telling my dad not to try and contact her, and that she’d taken her share of the money in their bank account—which turned out to be most of it, since she said she’d been an unpaid housekeeper for years. That was the last we heard from her.” He sighed.
“I don’t actually know if she’s dead or alive. I guess, being a detective and all, I could investigate and find out, but it doesn’t seem worth it.”
“I’m sorry,” Jamie murmured as she tried to imagine what his childhood must have been like.
“Yeah, well, I guess neither one of us had the pleasure of growing up in a stable home. After she bailed out on us, Dad did the best he could, but he had to work, which left me and Sammy on our own a lot of the time. At least there was an upside. It made me self-sufficient. I learned to cook and do my own laundry. And I can sew on a button, come to that.”
Jamie searched his face, touched that he’d revealed so much to her when he could have simply kept silent. She’d always thought of him as stable and grounded, and now he was letting her know that he’d overcome some serious obstacles. He was doing something else as well. Trying to help her understand that his visit to her family hadn’t shocked him. She appreciated the effort.
She’d been through an emotional wringer during the past twenty hours, and the glimpse into his unhappy background made her want to…
What? Thank him for revealing himself? Or maybe the wounded look in his eyes made her want to let him know that everything was all right. Whatever that meant.
Without fully understanding her own motives, she reached for him and pulled him close.
She’d felt safe in his arms last night when he’d come rushing over to find out what was wrong, and she’d never thanked him for that. She’d only bristled at the questions his job had compelled him to ask.
Suddenly, everything had shifted. When she eased back and tipped her face up, she found that her mouth was only inches from his. It had been a long time since she’d kissed a man, and she’d be fooling herself if she tried to deny that she’d thought of kissing this man. For heartbeats, neither one of them moved, except for their shallow breathing. It wasn’t too late to stop. Somewhere in her mind she knew she should pull away, but she stayed where she was for a charged second and then another.
She wasn’t sure which of them moved to close the gap, maybe both of them.
“Jamie.” He said her name as their mouths met, and he moved his lips over hers in a kiss that was tender and needy and sexy, all at the same time.
Wanting to shut out the world, she closed her eyes so that she could focus on the man who held her in his arms.
She liked the taste of him. The texture of his lips. The heat of his body. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she felt her arms encircle his neck. In response, he gathered her closer as he turned his head first one way and then the other to change the angle of the kiss.
Somewhere in her mind, a voice spoke. This is wrong. You shouldn’t be in his arms. You shouldn’t be kissing him. But it was impossible to heed that voice when it felt like the most natural thing in the world to be close to him like this. As she nestled in his embrace, she could imagine what it would be like to share more than this kiss with him. Not just a sexual encounter but all the emotions she’d kept bottled up inside her for long, lonely months.
His tongue played with the seam of her lips, asking her to open for him, and she did, so that he could explore the line of her teeth, then stroke the sensitive tissue on the inside of her lips.
She made a small sound deep in her throat, telling him she liked what he was doing. When his tongue dipped farther into her mouth, hot, needy sensations curled through her body.
His hands stroked up and down her ribs, gliding upward to find the sides of her breasts, making her nipples tighten. She wanted to beg for more. She’d forgotten where they were. Forgotten why she shouldn’t allow this man such liberties.
She tangled her hands in his thick, dark hair, loving the slightly rough texture. For months she’d wanted to touch him there, and now she had the freedom to do it. Sensations she hadn’t experienced for too long bombarded her body and overwhelmed her mind.
Wanting more of him, she eased back a little so that she