A Kiss In The Dark

Chapter 3

She could retreat from the world, build ice palaces where no one could touch her, hurt her, but by God, Dylan refused to let her slip away from him. Not again. Pretenses made him crazy. Lies destroyed.

Sex, Dylan. It was just sex. Nothing more, nothing less.

The words tore in from the past, dark. Tortured. After all this time, he still didn’t know if she’d spoken the truth when she’d told him she loved him, or when she’d told him she didn’t.

And he knew if Bethany had her way, he never would.

He felt her stiffen beneath his hands, his mouth, heard the sharp intake of breath. But she didn’t lift a hand to his face like she’d done that night in the mountains, didn’t sigh, didn’t open for him.

Frustration twisted with something darker, something he’d tried to destroy, but that had lain dormant instead. He’d hoped to slice through the remote facade she wore like a tight-fitting bodysuit, to see if he could still reach her or if after that night she’d traveled so far away, sewn herself up so tightly, that she was beyond even his touch.

He might as well have lifted a goblet of arsenic to his own mouth and drunk greedily.

Bethany wrenched away from his kiss and stared at him through huge, bruised eyes. The breath tore in and out of her.

“Does that change anything?” he asked darkly, buying time to bring himself under control.

She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “I’m not a naive, passion-drunk little girl anymore,” she whispered, “I’m not my mother. It takes more than a kiss in the dark to break me.”

Like he’d done before. She didn’t say the words, but they reverberated through him. He looked at her sitting inches from him, her hair loose around her face, the mutinous line of the mouth that could set his body to fire. She no longer wore that slinky robe, and for that, he found himself grateful. But somehow, even in the severe black pantsuit, she still managed to look shockingly vulnerable, wary, but beautiful all the same.

“Who said I was trying to break you?” Maybe he’d been trying to break himself.

A hard sound broke from her throat. He refused to label it pain.

“You forget,” she said. “I know you, Dylan. I know how you operate. But it’s not going to work. You can’t rattle a confession out of me—you lost that ability long ago.”

The words sounded tough, but he’d felt the tremor race through that lithe body of hers. Who was she trying to convince? he wondered. Him? Or herself.

“Careful, Bethany. Some men might mistake that as a challenge.”

She pulled his hand away from her face. “Let me go.”

He should, he knew. A smart man would unlock the door and let her vanish into the night all over again. But he couldn’t do that. Lance was dead, and Bethany had bruises around her wrists. He didn’t want to think about what other, less visible, wounds she hid. But did.

“You always thought you’d break if you showed emotion. But the truth is you’ll break if you don’t. There’s honesty in feeling things deeply. Not shame.”

Through the glow of the dashboard, her eyes darkened. At the house, he’d seen the wall of ice slide into place, but this time her expression remained naked and raw, like she was bleeding from the inside out and couldn’t make it stop.

“Maybe I don’t feel anything.” The words were soft, brittle, surprisingly candid. “Maybe everything inside me is cold. Frozen.”

And maybe he was a fool. He never should have come to the police station, never should have left his grandfather’s house. He’d gone there to tell the judge about Lance, but afterward, the silence had been suffocating. The older man had retreated, not showing a flicker of the grief Dylan knew he felt.

“It’s called shock,” he said and knew, “but someone who doesn’t know you could mistake lack of emotion for lack of feeling.”

“And you, Dylan? Is that what you think?”

“I know you’re capable of feeling. At least you used to be.” Earlier, the years between them had fallen away; now they stacked right back up. “But I don’t know you anymore, and I don’t have a damn clue how you felt about Lance.”

He never had, either. Part of him wanted to hear her express pure, undying love for his cousin. No matter how badly that would sting, at least it would help assure him Zito’s suspicions were as crazy as Dylan wanted them to be. Without that sentiment, he was left standing on the razor fine edge of doubt, and it was slicing him to the bone.

“Did you love him?” he asked point-blank.

She didn’t look away like he expected her to, like she once would have. Through the darkness, she just stared at him.

“Well?” he asked. “It’s not that tough of a question.”

Bethany looked down at the hands clasped severely in her lap, where the gaudy two-carat, emerald-cut solitaire Lance had given her no longer overwhelmed her slender finger.

“Lance and I had a…complicated relationship.”

“I thought it looked pretty simple.” Though he’d tried not to look at all. Not to know. “He went his way, and you went yours.”

She looked up abruptly. “Not every relationship has to be fire and brimstone. Sometimes they can be quiet and simple, undemanding. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

“Relationship? It looked more like a photo-op to me.”

Pain flickered in her eyes, and yet she lifted her chin like a queen. “You have no right to pass judgment on me, Dylan. Not you, of all people. You and Lance were hardly the devoted cousins your grandfather wanted everyone to think you were.”

“How could we be?” Sebastian St. Croix had done his best to raise Dylan and Lance as brothers, but they’d been as different as fire and ice. Lance had thrived in the posh world of the Portland elite, old money and timeless hypocrisy.

Dylan had felt like he’d been sent to prison.

“The only thing we had in common was something two men should never share.” And now Lance was dead, leaving Dylan to pick up the pieces, like his cousin had done for him so long ago.

“I’m not doing this,” Bethany said, reaching for the door.

But he didn’t release the locks, wasn’t ready to let her go. “I’m just calling a spade a spade, sweetheart.”

She turned back toward him. “But that doesn’t change anything, does it? Lance is still dead. And no matter what went down between the two of you, the two of us for that matter, he didn’t deserve to die.”

She’d yet to say she loved him. He wondered if she realized that. Worse, he wondered why he cared.

“No,” he agreed, “he didn’t.” But too well, Dylan knew people didn’t always get what they deserved. Or wanted.

Once, a long time ago, Dylan’s grandmother had given him a bag of marbles. He’d loved playing with the small, colorful glass balls, had spent hours organizing and sorting them. Then Prince Lance had come over, yanked the bag from Dylan’s hands, and dumped them on the sloping driveway. The marbles had scattered everywhere, and no matter how quickly Dylan tried to scoop them up, they just kept rolling away from him. With sickening clarity, he remembered the sound of Lance’s laughter.

But when his grandfather had caught them fighting, it had been Dylan who got the belt.

Now he studied Bethany through the blue glow of the dashboard lights, the shadows playing against the soft lines of her face. Silky hair cascaded down her shoulders, looking more sable than brown. She’d brushed it, he noted, and wondered if Lance had ever done the task for her. Like he had.

A long time ago.

“Where will you go?” he asked.

“Home,” she started, but he saw the second awareness dawned. Her home was a crime scene. “Maybe a hotel.”

“The media will be crawling all over you there,” he said. “You’ll be safer at my house.”

Her eyes flared. “Your house?”

He didn’t stop to think. “It’s isolated, secure. No one would find you there.”

And he really was out of his mind.

She just stared at him. And when she spoke, her voice was soft but cutting, classic Bethany. “That was me on the patio this evening. That was me you practically accused of killing your cousin. It’s too late to pretend you’re on my side.”

No matter where he stepped, they always landed in the same place. “I’m not the one pretending, Bethany.”

She didn’t defend herself as he wanted, didn’t take the bait. She just frowned. “It’s late, I’m tired, and I don’t have the energy for your games right now. Please. Let me go.”

“My God,” he said in a deceptively quiet voice, the one that masked all those sharp edges slicing him up inside. “You’re really just going to sit there and act like that night on the mountain didn’t happen?” He’d told himself he wasn’t going to bring it up, but the fact she was pretending it never happened pushed him over the edge. It happened. She’d come alive in his arms, twisted and turned, begged. “We didn’t even use birth control, for crissakes. I could have gotten you pregnant. Would you have even told me?”

The car was dark, but he saw the color fade from her face, saw her wince.

“I can’t have children,” she said. “You know that.”

The pain in her voice almost made him turn back. Almost. “Are you sure about that?”

She stared at him a long moment before answering. He waited for one of her ice walls to slide in place, but her expression remained naked, bleeding. He could hear the edge to her breathing. And slowly, slowly, fire came back into her eyes.

“Do you enjoy being cruel?” she asked in a cracked voice.

“It’s a legitimate question. We had sex. If there’s any chance—”

“It was a mistake!” she surprised him by shouting. “It was one of those heat of the moment—”

He went coldly still. “Don’t.”

He didn’t know whether it was the edge to his voice or the fury he knew hardened his expression, but something dangerously close to fear flashed in her eyes. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t sit there and insinuate you didn’t know what you were doing. You wanted me every bit as much as I wanted you.”

For a moment he saw the same heat in her gaze, that glaze of passion that had haunted him for so long. But then, finally, at last, a Bethany ice wall slid into place, and she angled her chin. “That doesn’t make it right.”

He wasn’t going to let her do it. Wasn’t going to let her use the heat between them as a weapon against him. “Quit trying to make everything black or white,” he bit out. “It wasn’t premeditated. It just…happened. We were stranded. You needed someone, and I was there.”

A shadow crossed her face. “It was wrong.”

It took effort, but somehow he resisted the urge to reach across the seat and put his mouth to hers, prove what she tried to deny.

Instead, he let an insolent smile curve his lips. “I thought it was pretty damn right.”

“Dylan—”

“But don’t worry, angel, when I think of that night…” which he tried not to “…I don’t see you naked or hear the way you cried out my name, I see the morning after, waking up alone in that big cold bed. I may be a slow learner, but sledgehammers like that usually do the trick.”

“Then there’s nothing left to say, is there?” she asked in a voice devoid of all emotion.

Because he wanted to crush her in his arms, he released the locks. “Go.”

She did. Without looking back, she pushed open the door and let in a blast of cold, then stepped into the night and vanished in the darkness.

Just like always.

B. B. King belted out the blues, but with only ten minutes until Shady’s called it a night, few remained to listen. Two of the three pool tables stood deserted. Only one poor soul remained at the bar. The smoke was actually beginning to clear.

“You know this breaks every rule in the book,” Zito said, running a hand over his scruffy face.

Dylan polished off his scotch and dropped the empty glass on top of a heart carved into the battered wood table. “Depends upon whose book you’re talking about.”

“Since when have I given a damn about any book but my own?”

That’s exactly what Dylan was counting on. After he’d followed Bethany to a hotel, he’d tried to go home and put her out of his mind, but quickly realized climbing Mount Hood blindfolded would be easier.

He needed to know what had gone down in that interrogation room. He knew Zito’s partner, knew the man’s knack for going for the jugular. And it had killed him to wait outside, to not know, to imagine. Had they broken her? Had they made her hurt?

“No one’s making you stay,” he reminded the detective.

Zito made a show of picking up his microbrew and drinking deeply of the local favorite, all the while his speculative, too-seeing gaze trained on Dylan. “Don’t tell me the champion of the underdog is standing by the woman who killed your cousin? Beauty doesn’t equate innocence, son.”

“You think she did it?” he asked as blandly as he could.

Zito shrugged. “Chances are.”

“Evidence?”

Zito reached for a cigarette. “Mostly circumstantial at this point, but the divorce makes a nice motive. She lost a lot when he walked out on her.”

“Money never mattered to her.” Just stability. Peace. Solitude. The kind of lifestyle Dylan could never offer.

“People change.”

Dylan eyed the half-empty pack of cigarettes. He hadn’t put one to his mouth in over a year, hadn’t craved the pungent bite in months. Until now. Sure people changed, but deep down, needs and desires stayed the same.

The daughter of a woman who thrived on grabbing the spotlight any way she could, who upgraded husbands and lovers more frequently than most people did cars, Bethany had always dreamed of a life straight out of a fifties sitcom. She wanted to be June Cleaver. She wanted to marry Ward.

Instead, she’d married Lance.

Dylan had always wondered what went down when Lance decided to enter public service, rather than the private sector he’d always promised he would serve. If she’d been angry, betrayed, she’d never let it show. While Lance’s star soared, she’d devoted herself to a nonprofit organization for underprivileged teenage girls.

The blade of sorrow caught him by surprise. Prince Lance was dead now. Gone forever. And Bethany was left standing in the spotlight, alone. With blood on her hands.

“It doesn’t add up,” he muttered. Despite the circumstantial evidence and apparent motivation, Dylan couldn’t see Bethany doing anything to draw attention to herself, much less place herself in the heart of a scandal.

“Not all crimes are premeditated,” Zito pointed out. “Passion can lead to murder as easily as a one-night stand. You don’t know what went down today. You don’t know what was going on between her and Lance. She might have just snapped.”

A hard sound broke from Dylan’s throat. “You don’t know Bethany.” She never snapped, never came unglued. Never. Except—

Don’t go there, he warned himself. Don’t even acknowledge there existed.

“I hate to spoil the party,” Loretta Myers said as she picked up their empties, “but some of us have homes to go to.”

Dylan glanced around the darkened bar and saw that only he and Zito remained. “Come on, Lori, cut us some slack.”

“Five minutes, saint. Five minutes.”

He winked, earning a glower before she strolled away.

“You can’t let that pretty face fool you, son.”

Dylan jerked his attention back to Zito, the cigarettes begging him from the table. Sometimes, restraint came at a high cost. “Come on, man, even I’m not that hard up.”

“Not Loretta. Bethany. I saw the way you were looking at her, the way she was looking at you.”

“And what way would that be?”

“I’m not a poet, son, but for a minute there I thought I was going to have a second crime to clean up.” Zito stood. “One of the hardest lessons a cop learns is to remain objective, no matter what. That’s what makes Bethany St. Croix so dangerous. I know it’s hard to look into those sexy blue eyes and see a murderer, not a woman you’d love to have underneath you, but facts don’t lie. And right now, the facts say she probably killed Lance. It’s my job to prove it.”

Everything inside Dylan hardened. He wanted to hit something. Someone. Hit hard. He wanted to turn his back on Bethany like she’d done him, but couldn’t. Not until he knew what really went down in that house.

“What the hell happened to innocent until proven guilty?” he barked.

Zito’s gaze sharpened. “There you go again, defending her. Is there something going on I should know about?”

Dylan almost laughed. Almost. It was either that or slam his fist against the table. The good detective had no idea. None. And if Dylan was going to get to the bottom of this mess, he needed to put all that boiling emotion aside and keep it that way.

“Chill out,” he said, standing. “I’m not defending her, and I’m sure as hell not getting suckered by a pretty face and killer body.” Not again. “Just considering all possibilities.”

“The cops are going after a crime of passion angle.”

Passion. The word made Beth cringe. “Lighting a wet match would be more likely,” she told Janine, looking out the window of her seventeenth-story hotel room. Early morning sun streamed through low clouds, the eerie backlighting making the vista look more like a dreamscape than a landscape.

Through the phone line, her friend sighed. “I know, but I also know how quickly things can spiral out of control. One moment is all it takes to change a lifetime.” She paused, seemed to hesitate. “Listen, Beth. If I’m going to help you, I need to be sure you’ve told me everything. About when you got home, when you came to, everything. I need to make sure there’s nothing the police can discover that you’ve held back.”

A chill cut through her. Too easily she could see the fire poker, feel its cold, deadly shape in her hands. “I didn’t kill him,” she said with absolute conviction.

“What about motive? Is there anything—anything—that could spark an argument? Lies? Betrayals?”

Deep inside, she started to bleed. “We didn’t argue.” Not even about the betrayals.

A few minutes later Beth hung up the phone. Fatigue pulled at her, but restless energy kept her from the bed. How could she slip between crisp sheets and close her eyes, when all she wanted was to wake up? Go back to before. Yes, she’d wanted Lance out of her life, but not like this. Dear God, not like this.

The numbness spread. She should feel something, she thought. She should feel something other than this icy chill whenever she thought about Lance. But the second she’d stepped from Dylan’s Bronco, the cold fog had returned, settling deep into her bones.

Sorrow squeezed her chest. Instinctively she clenched the lapel of the thick terrycloth robe tighter, as though in doing so she could hold the seams of her life together, as well. She had to find a way to stop the bleeding. To warm up. She couldn’t break down. She had to be strong.

Not just because of Lance, but because of Dylan.

She drew a hand to her mouth and tried to forget the feel of his lips on hers, the shock and the dizziness. His kiss hadn’t been hard like the words volleying between them, but unbearably soft. Seeking. Almost…desperate.

It was as though when he’d put his mouth to hers, he’d breathed life into her, a piece of himself. Just like before. The memory burned through her heart and her soul, and everywhere in between, searing and scorching. Tempting.

She couldn’t let him do that to her. Couldn’t let him overwhelm her through physical or sexual prowess. Couldn’t let him slip in and play her like a never-ending song. The coming days and weeks promised to be hard enough. She had no idea how she’d move past the horror of finding Lance dead, but knew Dylan St. Croix wasn’t the answer.

Turning, she headed for the bathroom, but saw the TV first.

“No stone will be left unturned,” Judge Sebastian St. Croix was vowing. The imposing patriarch’s face was pale, his brooding eyes red-rimmed, his white hair mussed. “No avenue unexplored. We will find my grandson’s murderer and exact swift justice.”

Beth froze.

“Have you talked to his wife?” Yvonne Kelley asked.

“That’s a family matter.”

The steely-eyed reporter didn’t back down. “Judge, a source tells me evidence at the scene suggests she might be involved. Is the family standing by her?”

His smile turned cutting. “The St. Croixs stand by justice, Evy, pure and simple. There’ll be an investigation—”

The sound of a loud knock overrode the rest of the judge’s rant. Beth swung toward the door, but didn’t move. No one knew she was here. She’d driven around for over an hour last night before losing the last of the journalists following her. She’d checked in under an assumed name. She’d paid in cash.

Another knock, this one more forceful. “Room service.”

Beth edged closer to the door, again tightening the sash of the bulky white robe provided by the hotel. All her clothes remained at the house that had never quite been a home, but was now a crime scene.

Through the peephole, she saw nothing, not even light, and her heart started to pound even harder.

“I didn’t order room service,” she said, keeping her eye to the opening.

“Damn it, Bethany, let me in.”

Her hands fell away from the door, as though the man outside had infused the cool wood with the power to burn her palms.

Dylan.

Her heart slowed and thrummed, then started to hammer. Swearing softly, she looked more closely. Clearly he hadn’t slept much, but not even fatigue interfered with Dylan St. Croix. It enhanced. He stood there in an olive button-down and black jeans, a knapsack over his shoulder, a silver tray on one of his hands. His dark hair was mussed, his deep-set eyes deceptively benign. Whiskers shadowed his jaw.