This time she couldn't control her flinch. She pulled away from him and gave him another smile, this one even more strained than the first one.
"I understand," she forced herself to say with fragile cam-L "I won't bother you."
"The hell you won't," he snapped.
Chapter 9
"You've been bothering me for most of your life." He leaned forward, scowling at her.
"You bother me by being in the same room. You bother me by breathing." Furiously he pulled her against him and ground his mouth down on hers. Roanna was too startled to react. All she could do was hang there in his hard grasp and open her mouth to the demand of his. The kiss was deep and intimate, his tongue moving against hers, and down below she could feel the iron ridge of his erection pressing into her belly.
He pushed her away as suddenly as he had grabbed her.
"Now trot on back to Lucinda and tell her mission accomplished. Whether or not you tell her how you did it is up to you." He opened the car door and ushered her inside, then stood for a moment looking down at her.
"And you don't understand a damn thing," he said evenly, before closing the door and striding back to his truck.
When Roanna reached the long driveway to Davencourt that night, as exhausted from the second day of hard travel as she had been from the first, she groaned aloud at the lights still shining like a beacon from the big house. She'd hoped everyone would have gone to bed, so she could regroup before having to face the inquisition she knew was coming. She'd even hoped she could manage to get as much sleep as she had the night before, though that was unlikely. If she couldn't sleep, then at least she could relive those tumultuous hours, savor the memory of his naked body against hers, the kisses, the touches, the shattering, unending moments when he'd actually been inside her. And when she felt calmer, she would think about the rest of it, the hurtful things he'd said and the fact that he didn't want her again ... But then why had he kissed her? She was too tired to think straight, so the analysis could wait.
She used the automatic opener for the garage, then braked when her headlights swept across a car already parked in her space. She sighed. Corliss again, taking advantage of Roanna's absence to park her own car inside. The detached garage had only five bays, and those bays were allotted to Lucinda, though she no longer drove herself, Roanna, Gloria and Harlan, and Lanette and Greg, who each had a car. Brock and Corliss were supposed to park their cars outside, but Corliss had a habit of ignoring that and parking her car in any empty space. Roanna parked her car beside Brock's and wearily climbed out, hauling her small overnight case with her. She thought about slipping up the outside stairway and around the, balcony to her room on the back, but she had locked the French doors before leaving and couldn't get in that way. Instead she would go in through the kitchen and hope she could make it to the stairs unnoticed.
Luck wasn't with her. When she unlocked the kitchen door and opened it, Harlan and Gloria were both sitting at the kitchen table, demolishing thick slices of Tansy's coconut cake. Neither of them were in their nightclothes yet, which meant they had been watching television on the large set in the den.
Gloria hastily swallowed.
"You couldn't find him!" she exclaimed, openly gleeful of the fact that Roanna was alone. Then she gave Roanna a sly, conspiratorial look.
"Not that you tried very hard, did you? Well, I won't say anything. I thought Lucinda had lost her mind anyway. Why on earth would she want to bring him back here? I know Booley didn't arrest him, but everyone knew he was guilty, there was just no way to prove it-" "I found him," Roanna interrupted. She felt fuzzy headed with fatigue, and wanted to cut the interrogation short.
"He had some business to take care of, but he'll be coming home within the next two weeks."
Gloria's color faded, and she gaped openmouthed at Roanna. The cake crumbs thus revealed were unappetizing. Then she said, "Roanna, how could you be so stupid?" Each word rose until she was fairly shrieking.
"Don't you know what you stand to lose? All of this could have been yours, but Lucinda will give it back to him, you mark my words! And what about us? Why, we could all be murdered in our beds, the way poor Jessie-" "Jessie wasn't murdered in her bed," Roanna said tiredly.
"Don't split hairs with me, you know what I mean!"
"Webb didn't kill her."
"Well, the sheriff thought he did, and I'm sure he knows more about it than you do! We all heard him say he'd do anything to get rid of her."
"We all heard him tell her to get a divorce, too."
"Gloria's right," Harlan weighed in, knitting his bushy brows with concern.
"There's no telling what he's capable of doing."
Normally Roanna didn't argue, but she was exhausted, and every nerve in her body felt raw from her encounter with Webb.
"What you're really worried about," she said in a colorless voice, "is that he'll remember how you turned your backs on him when he needed our support, and tell you to find somewhere else to live."
"Roanna!" Gloria gasped, outraged.
"How can you say such a thing to us? What were we supposed to do, shelter a killer from the law?"
There was nothing she could say to alter their position, and she was too tired to try any longer. Let Webb handle it when he got back. She had just enough energy to feel a flicker of interest at the prospect. If they thought he'd been intimidating before, wait until they saw what they had to deal with now. He was much harder and more forceful.
Leaving Gloria and Harlan still sputtering their rage into the coconut cake, Roanna dragged herself up the stairs. Lucinda was already in bed; she tired easily these days, another indication of her failing health, and was often asleep by nine. Morning would be plenty of time to tell her that Webb was coming home.