He didn’t move, except for his jaw, which clenched tighter.

“Marianne. She still loves you.”

He punched his pillow and resituated it beneath his head, mumbling, “She’s where she belongs.”

“Yes, and she knows that. But—”

“But nothing. Hearth and home were what she wanted.”

“She has that with David. All the same, she still loves you. I could see it in her eyes.”

“Affection. Sentimental fondness. That’s what you saw. Like I feel for her. I want Marianne to be happy. She feels the same toward me. But don’t read more into it than that. Now go to sleep.” He reached up and snapped off the lamp on the night-stand between the beds.

Several moments passed, then Kerra said into the darkness, “Why do men avoid conversations like this?”

“Because they’re pointless.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Who?”

“You know who, Trapper. Marianne’s husband.”

“A prince among men.”

“Who is resentful of you. What if he tells someone about the mysterious package you mailed to yourself?”

“He won’t.”

“You’re that sure of him?”

“No, I’m that sure of Marianne. She knew that envelope had come from me. She knew if I’d gone to those lengths, it was no trivial matter. Despite her sweet demeanor, she was a federal agent, don’t forget. She’ll impress on her husband how important that package was and then tell him to erase it from memory. As far as he’s concerned, we were never there.”

“You’re probably right. He wouldn’t place her in jeopardy. He seemed very protective. He loves her.”

Trapper mumbled something.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

He exhaled with annoyance. “He does love her, that was plain. But I’ll tell you something. In his position, if my wife’s former lover showed up at my house, a man I knew had caused her to lose her job, lose her baby, and had left her with a broken heart, I’d have flattened him as soon as I saw him, warned him not to even think about putting his hands on her, and then I’d’ve ripped his goddamn head off.

“Which is why Marianne is where she belongs, with a nice man who controls his primal impulses, instead of with a nightmare like me who’s on a destructive path and a hazard to everybody around him, and that brings us right back to where we started, which is why I said that conversations like this are pointless.”

His alpha male outburst caused an excited hitch in her breathing. “Maybe if Marianne had known you felt that possessive of her—”

“I didn’t. Wasn’t her I was thinking about.”

She sensed the sudden motion, and then he was there, on his knees straddling her, pulling her into a sitting position. He took a fistful of hair at the back of her head and held it in place while he kissed her with unleashed hunger. His lips slanted across hers. He thrust his tongue into her mouth with insistence.

But then it gentled and moved slowly in and out between her lips with gliding strokes. When he finally broke away, she was left panting for breath and trying to balance. Her heart was pumping fast, but her bones seemed to have liquefied.

“I want to take you like that,” he whispered as he dragged his open mouth down her neck to her collarbone, then lowered his head and rubbed his face against her breasts.

“I haven’t forgotten how you feel inside. I want to be there. In you deep.” His voice was rough and low, his lips aggressive against her raised nipple under her t-shirt. “It may never happen, but the mere thought of any other man being on you, in you … I’d want to kill him.”

He pressed his face against her, breathing hard and hot. Then he came up straight and, clasping her face between his hands, stamped a kiss on her lips. “Now go to sleep.”

Chapter 23

Glenn looked down with distaste at The Major’s hospital breakfast. “I wouldn’t want to eat it, either.”

“I’ll choke it down only because I want to get my strength back.”

“You’ve had a shock to your system. Most bet good money you’d never recover. You’ve beaten the odds so far. Don’t rush it.”

The Major smiled. “That’s exactly what Kerra advised.”

“Kerra advised? When was this?”

“Sometime in the wee hours. She and John sneaked in.”

“They did, huh?” The sheriff propped one buttock on the end corner of the bed and recounted for his friend the telephone conversation he’d had with Trapper the night before. “He was coming back because he’d heard about our suspect. He didn’t say outright that Kerra was with him, but he promised to produce her this morning. Bright and early.” He arched an eyebrow.

The Major took his meaning. “They’re sleeping together.”

“You know John.”

“All too well.”

“They got off to a rocky start,” Glenn told him. “Trapper was mad as hell at her over the earring business, but late that evening, when I went looking for him to tell him you’d regained consciousness, I interrupted a tender moment in her motel room.”

“Back up, Glenn. What earring business?”

“I keep forgetting how much drama you missed that first couple of days.” Glenn told him about Kerra’s missing shoulder bag and the reappearance of one earring. “Though it seems highly unlikely Trapper discovered it under her hospital bed. If her bag didn’t make it to that room, how’d her earring get there?”

“John lied to you?”

“Also to a pair of Texas Rangers.”

“Why would he have taken Kerra’s bag? And when?”

“All of the above remains a mystery. But looks to me like Kerra believed his explanation, no matter how improbable, and he forgave her for suspecting him.”

“Suspecting him of what? Why was he talking to Texas Rangers?”

The sheriff scratched his eyebrow with his thumbnail. “Don’t make me play the tattletale on the boy.”

“He’s not a boy. He’s a man.”

Ill at ease, Glenn fiddled with the leather hatband around his Stetson. “From the get-go Trapper’s been poking into the investigation, hovering around Kerra, wanting to know what she saw, who she saw, if she saw anything. I called him on it, but …”

“He responded to correction in his customary fashion.”

“Basically. But his interest in what happened out at your place drew attention. It seemed more intense than a family member’s wish to catch the bad guys who shot their kin. After the earring thing, the Rangers were ready to put him in lockup and hold him as a possible suspect.”

“For shooting me?”

“I told the Rangers it was horseshit. But, let’s face it, in view of your falling out, which everybody is aware of, he had to be given a hard look.”

“John would never have done it.”

“What I told the Rangers, and I don’t think they really suspected him so much as they disliked his smart-aleck attitude. Anyhow, we had nothing to justify holding him. His alibi for Sunday night checked out. Since then, though, he hasn’t curried any favor by running away with our material witness and keeping her under wraps.

“So either he and Kerra are screwing like bunnies and barely coming up for air, or he’s keeping her in his hip pocket for some other reason, and, knowing Trapper as I do, I’m scared even to speculate on what that might be.”

As he listened to all this, The Major’s features had become increasingly knit with worry and indecision. He asked Glenn to close the door.

Glenn did as requested, then returned to his perch at the foot of the bed. “This looks and feels serious.”

“It is,” The Major said. “I’m afraid John is creating a dreadful situation for himself.”

“What kind of situation? With Kerra?”

“No, this has nothing to do with her, except that he’s drawn her into it.”

He stopped with that, but it was clear to Glenn that his friend was still wrestling with indecision, so he kept quiet and gave him time to collect and arrange his thoughts. Then The Major began to talk and did so in a steady stream without interruption. It was ten minutes before he finished, and by then he was spent, his respiration wheezy.