Raintree: Haunted by Linda Winstead Jones

Author:Linda Winstead Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

Gideon lifted a sleeping Hope gently, and she didn’t even stir. He could leave her on the couch, he supposed, but the leather wouldn’t be pleasant to sleep on for very long. He laid her in his bed, instead, and she immediately rolled onto her side, grabbed a pillow and sighed.

She could sleep in her clothes, but, like the couch…not very comfortable. He unfastened her trousers, waiting with each second that passed for her to wake up and slap him. But she was a deep sleeper, or else the day’s events had exhausted her. She slept on, barely moving while he removed her once-crisp gray trousers and tossed them aside.

The blouse would have to stay. He really wasn’t up to getting her completely naked and then turning away. Without the bra, which still sat on the living room couch, she would be comfortable enough.

When Hope was down to blouse and panties, he covered her with the sheet and walked on bare feet to the window. Before closing the drapes, he stood there for a few minutes and watched the waves crash onto the beach.

He’d told her more than he’d ever told anyone else. One woman had seen a glimpse—a tiny glimpse—of what he could do, and she hadn’t been able to get away from him fast enough. That had been a long time ago. He’d run into her once, a couple of years after the split, and she had apparently forgotten all about the reason for their breakup. People did that. If they couldn’t explain what they saw, they simply forgot. It was an amnesia meant to protect the mind from things that could not be accepted, he imagined, no different than forgetting the details of a car crash or any other traumatic event. Happened all the time.

Would Hope forget everything come morning? Maybe. She was a no-nonsense woman who wasn’t given to believing in anything that rocked her neat little world. He could most definitely rock her world—in more ways than one.

He finally closed the drapes and returned to the bed, crawling in beside Hope. Her warmth and softness called him closer, and he answered that call. All along he’d known that if he slept with her, she would have to request a transfer, but that didn’t have anything to do with the way he wanted her.

There was a double bed in the spare bedroom on the third floor, and that was it as far as alternate sleeping arrangements were concerned. The room was used for storage, mostly, but Echo stayed here infrequently, and Mercy had visited with Eve on rare occasions, so he did keep it ready for guests. Only a glutton for punishment would fill a beach house with a selection of comfortable and welcoming guest rooms, and since Gideon preferred solitude, his lack of accommodations made perfect sense.

The single guest bed was without sheets at the moment since Echo had stripped the bed Monday before leaving for Charlotte, and it was also piled high with the files he’d brought home about the unsolved murders.

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