This was Carter’s least favorite time of day. Darkness yawned in front of him like a murky, endless ditch that no amount of dirt in the world could fill in, no matter how hard he shoveled. Shadows claimed the corners of the small, old house and lengthened, the few lamps and lightbulbs stopping them from swallowing the rooms altogether.
Carter usually did one of two things right about now. Either he sat in front of the old television set with a twelve-pack next to one ankle while Blue rested against the other. Or he hit a nearby roadhouse, seeking temporary companionship and ultimately escape in a welcoming woman’s arms.
Neither option seemed palatable to him just now. Mostly because the only arms he could seem to concentrate on belonged to Laney Cartwright.
His muscles trembled as he pushed them beyond their limits. He finally collapsed to the floor, his cheek resting against the cool tile, his lungs on fire. But he paid attention to nothing outside the image of Laney’s surprised and happy smile earlier at the restaurant when she realized he wasn’t going anywhere.
The closest he’d come to meeting his match in a woman was JoEllen Atchison. He winced. At least that’s what he liked to tell himself. It turned out JoEllen must not have returned the sentiment or else she would never have believed him capable of trying to rape her two months ago. Still, before then, he’d been convinced that they had been simpatico, two jarheads who didn’t require foreplay but went straight to the deed when the need hit, their only real relationship being with the U.S. Marine Corps.
Carter rolled over and stared at the ceiling. Now with the wisdom that came with hindsight, he realized that what he and JoEllen had had was nothing but a handful of one-night stands that had occasionally included a weekend locked away in a seedy motel room with a box of pizza and a case of beer. And that somewhere down the line he had mistaken that for a relationship.
Of course, it was hard to understand the difference, because he had never really had a steady relationship with a woman. When he was younger, he’d been too busy being a Marine commander’s son. There had been no real time for the usual teenage stuff outside his positions as varsity football cornerback and team captain, the roles nothing more to him than warm-up for what he would do once he enlisted in the Marines when he was eighteen.
Girls…oh, they’d been there. Lifting up their pretty skirts and kissing him with their cherry-flavored lip gloss. But he’d never seen one of them more than three times, and even then not necessarily in a row, since he went out with other girls in between. He hadn’t fooled himself into thinking that the reason he got away with such bad behavior had to do with his good looks. As his father had liked to tell him, he looked two licks shy of a full tongue bath.
No, he knew his status as football captain allowed him certain privileges. Liberties he hadn’t been extended in the Corps, where one Marine was treated no different than a hundred others.
His mother…well, his mother lived down in Austin with another family. One she’d started after leaving Carter with his father when he was five, marrying another man and going on to have four more children that were no more like Carter than the sun was like the moon.
Heaving himself up from the floor, he opened the refrigerator, staring at the half-dozen bottles of beer in there, and reached for the water bottle instead. Unscrewing the top, he went to stand at the back doorway, staring out at the dark sky as he guzzled a good portion of cold water.
It wasn’t often that he wondered how life would have turned out for him had his mother taken him with her instead of leaving him with his father. Only every now and again when he found himself drifting in a sea of uncertainty. As he was now.
Would he have been a lawyer like Laney? A doctor? All four of his half siblings either boasted advanced degrees or were in the process of earning them.
Instead, the reason his mother had left his father had become a way of life for Carter, as well: the Corps.
And he had holes in his stomach knowing that they no longer wanted him.
Blue whined at his feet. Carter looked down at the old hound licking his drooping chops.
“What is it, boy?” He lifted the water bottle. “You want some of this?”
He opened the back door and led the way out onto the porch, where he poured a good portion into the dog’s bowl. The hound lapped it up.
Carter dropped to sit on the edge of the small landing, letting his feet dangle over the side. On the kitchen table his M16 assault rifle lay partially disassembled where he’d been cleaning it, next to a half-eaten burger he’d picked up from a nearby diner earlier.
He spotted the waxing quarter moon rising from the other side of the trees and thought again of Laney Cartwright. Wondered what she was doing right about then.
Wondered if she was thinking about him.
LANEY LAY BACK against the down pillows piled up against her headboard, her feet tucked under the soft Egyptian cotton sheets because they always got cold with the air conditioner on. The grandfather clock her father had bought her a couple of years ago chimed the hour in the front room of her two-bedroom penthouse apartment as she leafed through the MacGregor case file, trying to figure out who might want to threaten her. Laughter caught her attention and she looked up to try to catch the joke she’d just missed on her DVD of the third season of Sex and the City. It wasn’t long before her wandering attention wandered farther still and she was thinking about Carter Southard and the time they’d spent together earlier in the day.
So Carter Southard was a Marine.
She didn’t know why she was surprised. He fit all the physical requirements of the job. And certainly the mental criteria, as well.
Still, somehow she imagined him doing something else. Say, drilling for oil. Or running a cattle ranch. Something that required him to be out in the sun all day toiling away.
Of course, he could do that as a Marine, but…
She sighed. Okay, her thoughts were veering toward the ridiculous. All because she was trying to ignore the fact that she was so enormously attracted to him she’d nearly blown off her afternoon agenda on the MacGregor case and called him. Not for social reasons. But to get the name of his JAG attorney, which he’d promised to supply.
Not for social reasons, indeed.
Although that wasn’t far off the mark. She didn’t want to take him to a garden party or a symphony benefit. She wanted to share her bed with him.
Laughter caught her attention again and she forced herself to look down at the file resting against the easel formed by her knees. She should be thinking about the brief meeting she’d had with a police detective after lunch. About his questions on the MacGregor case and who might want to send her the threatening note. But she hadn’t been able to help him. MacGregor hadn’t had an accomplice. He was being charged as the lone gunman in a convenience store robbery that had left a male clerk dead.
So who would want to warn her off the case?
Well, she certainly wasn’t going to solve the mystery tonight. Not with her mind wandering to Carter every two seconds.
She closed the file and put it on the bedside table, then reached for the bottle of lotion there, smoothing a good squirt over her arms and knees before sliding farther down under the sheets.
“Do you make a habit of picking up strays?” Carter had asked her as they’d walked back to the office after lunch.
“What?”
He’d shrugged. “I can’t help wondering if taking on strange cases is something you do on a regular basis, or if I’m the exception.”
She’d stopped in front of the building and faced him, watching the way he squinted against the midday sun, causing fine lines to fan out from his granite eyes.
“Oh, you’re definitely an exception, Carter Southard,” she’d said. “And I have the feeling that this isn’t the only rule you’re going to inspire