“I’m sorry. Jesus, that woman makes me crazy. You weren’t a conquest. I’ve never thought of you that way.” He tipped her chin up, returning her gaze to his. “I swear it, Valerie.”
Her eyes burned. She read the truth in his face and she believed him. She almost wished she didn’t. It would be easier to pretend last night had meant nothing to either one of them. That she was in no emotional danger, that her heart would be safe from Ethan.
He kissed her very softly, sinking in for a moment, letting her feel the heat, before he eased away. “Allison Winfield had nothing to do with what happened between us last night. She never will.”
Relief and something deeper filled her chest. She managed to nod. “Okay.”
Ethan ran a finger down her cheek. “God, I’d like to take you back to bed and show you how much you mean to me. But I can’t. I’ve got a lead on the case. Until you and the other girls are safe, I’ve got to stay on it.”
She shoved aside a memory of the rightness she’d felt when he was inside her and focused on what else he had said. “You got a lead? What is it?”
“There’s a chance the guy who murdered Mandy Gee is Amish—or was. I need to find him. I need to locate someone who knows his name, see if I can get them to tell me where this guy is. I’ve got two possible locations in Texas, small Amish communities. One’s only a couple of hours away from the city. I’m driving out there this morning.”
“Take me with you. I’m off work today and I’d love to get away from the hotel. Let me go with you.”
He hesitated a moment, clearly assessing the danger. Then he smiled; relieved, perhaps, that she had decided to forgive him, that she still wanted to be with him. But the truth was, his determination to be a real father only made her think more highly of him.
“I don’t see any reason you can’t come. The guy won’t be there. He was ousted when he was a teen. And I might get more cooperation if I have a woman with me.”
“Great. I’d better get dressed.”
Ethan’s mouth edged up, reminding her of last night, of his hot, wet kisses.Everywhere.Her stomach clenched.
“I had other ideas about how we’d be spending the morning,” he said with a look that made her stomach tighten again. “Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen now.”
Val just smiled. “I’ll get dressed, but I need coffee first.” She headed for the coffeemaker on the wet bar, poured herself a cup, and headed for the bedroom.
At least she wasn’t just a conquest. She wasn’t sure if that made things better or worse.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The relentless, humid July heat bore down on the Texas landscape as Val sat in the passenger seat of Ethan’s rented Buick. He was driving Highway 281 toward Stephenville, where he hoped to get the name of the man he suspected had killed Mandy Gee, a man who still posed a dangerous threat to the models.
The road stretched in front of them, a ribbon of black marked by a string of disappearing mirages, water you never reached no matter how far you drove. A thorny green landscape of elm and ash weighed down with dense, leafy branches; thickets of mulberry and fields of sharp-bladed grasses grew beside heavy stands of cottonwood at the edge of meandering creeks.
It was a foreign environment, unwelcoming to an outsider, reminding her why she loved the pine-forested hills of Seattle.
“You really think we’ll find someone out here who knows this man?” she asked, breaking the silence inside the car.
“It’s a long shot,” Ethan said. “But running on hunches is a lot of what my job is about. If we don’t find anything here, I’ll talk to the authorities in Beeville, see if I can find someone who’ll do some legwork in the Amish community there.”
“You worked in Dallas. Were you born in Texas?”
He nodded. “Little town east of the city called Sulpher Springs. My family had a ranch there, big one. Broke it up and sold most of it. Some of my cousins still raise cattle near there.”
“Your parents still live in Texas?”
“My mom died a while back. Dad remarried, moved to North Carolina. He just adopted his second wife’s kids.”
“Will you have time to see your cousins while you’re here?”
“I’d hoped to. Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Maybe I’ll bring Hannah back for Christmas, give them a chance to meet her if—” He broke off the thought and just shook his head.
“Don’t do that. You’re going to get things worked out with Allison so that you can spend more time with Hannah.”
He managed to smile. “I hope so.”
Val smiled back. “So . . . you were more city boy than cowboy.”
