“You don’t have to . . .”
“And I’ve always had blond hair. Sorry.” She glanced up and smiled casually at him. “Was she important to you, this girl? Are you searching for her for personal reasons, or is it, you know, a police thing?”
Clancy felt one of his eyebrows arch high, not even sure how to respond to that loaded set of absurd questions. First off, it didn’t take a cop to see that she was lying about her hair. She’d recently bleached it, and not all that evenly, either. And she’d managed to ask about his feelings for her while fishing around for whether he suspected her of wrongdoing. This was getting more interesting by the second.
Just then, she slipped the photo into the pouch of her sweatshirt. He pretended not to notice.
“Why didn’t you write me, Evie?”
He watched a dozen different emotions rush across her pretty face. Surprise, anger, frustration, fear . . . she wanted to say something. Her lips parted. It was killing her not to be able to say it. A bead of perspiration appeared on her upper lip.
“I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.” She wiped her palms on the front of her jeans. “Whoever that girl was, she cared a lot for you—you can see it in the picture. I’m sure she wrote you. I mean, why wouldn’t she?”
With that, she jumped up and returned to the motel, already reaching to put the key in the door.
Clancy would not let it end like this. Evie was going to bolt the first opportunity she got. She felt threatened that he was a cop and terrified because he’d figured out who she was. He saw how she struggled, how she wished she could tell him what was going on . . . if only she trusted him.
He jumped off the bench and in an instant stood behind her. Her back was so close he could feel her heat radiate through the sweatshirt and onto his chest. He lowered his mouth to her ear. “Evie.” He touched her hair. He softly placed his lips on the back of her neck.
She spun around. Evie raised her face and leaned forward tentatively, touching her mouth to his. Almost immediately, she pulled away, her eyes filling with tears. “Good-bye, Clancy. It was nice to see you again—today. Since earlier today. Thank you for saving my nephew.”
The force of his response surprised him. He pulled her against his body and kissed her, hot and slick and over and over again. Instead of pushing him away, she fitted her body against his, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him back with a desperation he’d never felt from a woman in all his life. Her hands were in his hair; then her fingers dug into his shoulders. She moaned into his mouth. She allowed him to back her against the motel room door.
Clancy was out of his head. He was gone, completely lost inside the kiss, only wanting more of her, anything and everything she had to give. His hands pushed up inside the sweatshirt and grasped her firm waist, caressed her straight back, pressed against the hot, smooth skin of her belly. Christ, he hadn’t wrestled with this kind of raw need since . . . never. Not like this, ripe and hot and full-to-bursting from the first touch.
It was completely insane how much he wanted her.
She began to push him away, tentatively at first, then with force. He let her go. They stared at each other for several seconds, breathing hard, bewildered, and amazed.
She touched her fingers to her lips, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just done. “I have to go.”
“I can help you. Whatever it is, you can trust me.”
She opened the door and slipped inside.
And just like that, it was over.
* * *
As exhausted as Clancy was, there was no way he could go home. Not like this, with ten thousand questions swirling around his brain. He knew how it worked. If he went home with a head full of loose ends, he would only lie in his bed and stare out the window, unable to sleep. He might as well get to it.