For Her Eyes Only Part 2

Stone grabbed her as she started to run past him. His hands were firm upon her arms, but his voice was gentle as he did what he could to ease her panic.

“Let me go!” Jessica cried.

“Jessie, look at me,” Stone urged.

She glanced over her shoulder at Brenda, her eyes wide with shock. But Brenda hadn’t moved.

“Jessie…” Stone’s voice was calm, his warning less than urgent. It was more a tone one would take with a child who wouldn’t listen.

She took a deep breath, telling herself that it would be all right, and looked up. Stone was watching her. Waiting.

“I’m all right.” She stepped backward out of his grasp. “Sorry. For a moment there, I guess I just panicked.”

A car turned the corner of the block. The headlights swept across them, then it continued up the block to a house at the end of the street. Stone held out his hand.

“Let’s go inside.”

Jessica started up the steps, with Stone and Brenda right behind her. Her hand was on the doorknob when she remembered that it was locked. Muttering beneath her breath, she began to dig in her purse when Stone appeared at her side, the trusty lock pick in his hands.

“Allow me,” he said with a grin.

Once more, the lock gave to his skillful intrusion, and he stepped aside for the women to proceed. Brenda eyed him thoughtfully as she passed by. Stone managed a smile, but couldn’t bring himself to fully meet her questioning gaze. When he’d been learning about police protocol, they had left out the part about wooing women of the same family. Now he knew why.

Jessica flipped on the lights as she entered. Stone shut the door behind him. They were inside. Together. And it seemed that no one knew what to say or where to start.

Finally it was Jessica who broke the ice, and her question ended the odd stalemate by bringing the true problem to the fore.

“Am I in any danger?”

“I don’t think so,” Stone said. “However, there’s a possibility that the word has already been leaked about someone having a premonition about Olivia being murdered instead of dying from a heart attack.”

Jessica glanced at Brenda.

“Don’t look at me,” Brenda said quickly.

“It wasn’t your sister,” Stone said. “It was one of ours.”

“That detective,” Jessica said. “The one who laughed in my face.”

“He didn’t exactly laugh,” Stone reminded her.

“Well, he did everything but laugh,” she said, and then sighed. “It doesn’t really matter, I guess. What does matter is finding out who killed Mrs. Stuart. I always liked her.”

“Everyone liked her,” Brenda said.

“Someone didn’t,” Stone said.

Jessica blanched. That panicked feeling was coming back, and she needed to change the subject. She glanced at Brenda and tried to smile. “Who wants coffee?”

“I’ll make it,” Brenda offered.

“That’s a relief,” Stone said, and was rewarded by Jessie’s offended glare. He grinned. Right now he would have done anything to get her mind off the business at hand.

Brenda disappeared down the hall, leaving Stone and Jessica alone.

“So, what are you thinking?”

In her typical straightforward manner, Jessica gave him an answer he wasn’t ready to hear.

“That you could have called to give me this information.”

He looked startled. “Well, yes, I suppose I—”

“Then, why didn’t you?” she asked.

Stone froze. Why didn’t he call? His gaze swept her face, then her body, trying to find an answer she would believe.

There was a smudge on the leg of her slacks, and her hair was as flyaway as the expression in her eyes. Along with the stitches just visible beneath her bangs, the small, bare spot surrounding them made him ache to hold her. She was so small, and looked so fragile and afraid. And as he stood, caught within the power of a blue, megawatt stare, he knew.

“Because I wanted to see you.”

He’d shocked her. He could see it in her eyes.

Startled, Jessica took a small step back.

His voice lowered and he followed her retreat. “Because I wanted to hold you.”

Her heart started to pound. How dare he tell her these things now?

“You’ve said all this before. Besides, you know it’s easy to say when my sister is just down the hall.”

He paused in midstep. At that moment, he realized he’d completely forgotten Brenda was even in the house. But it didn’t stop him long. He started after her.

“I don’t care if the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is in the next room, and if you’ll stand still long enough, I’ll prove it.”

She froze.

A wry smile spread across his face. “That’s what I like best about you, honey. You always know when to call a man’s bluff.”

His arms slid around her shoulders, and then he was pulling her close—and closer still.

She wound her arms around his neck. “I’m not your honey,” she whispered. “You didn’t want me, remember?”

He kissed her slowly. He tasted the edge of her lower lip, then moved past the gasp she’d just made to the sweet curve of her upper lip where it dipped downward in the center like the bud of a rose. He felt a shudder rip through her, and answered with a sigh of his own as he took her in his arms, lifting her off her feet until she was dangling in his grasp, several inches off the ground.

His whisper was soft near her ear. “You know what, Jessie Leigh?”

She opened her eyes and got lost in that dark, gray gaze. Only after he’d kissed her again then set her back on the floor did she remember he’d asked her a question.

“What?” she said with a sigh.

“I never said I didn’t want you.”

“But you let me go. It’s all the same thing.”

“I tried marriage and failed…miserably. I’m not stupid. I don’t intend to make the same mistake twice.”

She blinked through tears.

“But I’m not Naomi.”

He looked down at her tousled hair and tear-filled eyes and pulled her close, pressing her face against the center of his chest. For a moment, he neither moved nor breathed as a longing for something more than they’d had before hit him deep.

“I know who you are, Jessie Leigh. I remember the feel of your skin beneath my fingers. I—”

Brenda’s shout echoed down the hall.

“Coffee’s done!”

Startled by her sister’s untimely intrusion, she made a face and then sighed. “Rusty nails. Why wasn’t I born an only child?”

Stone stepped back, grateful that he’d been saved from making another serious mistake. It didn’t matter—couldn’t matter—how much he wanted Jessie, or how much he cared for her. He’d been down that road before, and there was nothing at the end of it but trouble.

* * *

Long after Stone and Brenda were gone, Jessica lay in her bed, imagining she could still feel the imprint of Stone’s mouth upon her lips and his breath upon her face. She closed her eyes, cuddling a pillow against her breast because she needed to be held and it was the closest thing to comfort she was going to receive.

Chapter Six

It Was Murder!

The glaring headlines of the Grand Springs Herald on Friday morning were causing an uproar all over the city. Gossip abounded as the news of Olivia Stuart’s death was given a new and macabre twist.

It was common knowledge that the mayor had been publicly and vocally opposed to a strip mining consortium that was trying to establish backing within the community so they could renew their lease. Fingers of suspicion could be pointed in any number of directions, but there was no proof linking the naysayers to Olivia Stuart’s death.

Other than the autopsy report, the detectives assigned to the case had few clues, and none that would stand up in court.

And, to Stone’s dismay, although it had yet to appear in the paper, he’d already heard whispers on the street about a secret witness having a psychic vision about the murder.

If Jessica Hanson was to be believed, and Stone had no reason to doubt her now, then the killer was a woman who preferred red fingernail polish and the scent of gardenias. For a man trained to deal in physical facts, it was one hell of a pitiful lead with which to start a case.

* * *

Jessica Hanson was one of the few people in the city who should not have been shocked by the morning headlines, yet when she picked the paper up off her front lawn and opened it on the way to the house, she saw the headline and stumbled, stubbing her toe on a crack in the concrete.

Ignoring the pain, she stood barefoot on her walkway, with the tail of her robe trailing in dew-damp grass, and read—from the headline, to the byline, to the last period that ended the piece.

“Isn’t it awful?”

Startled that she was no longer alone, Jessica looked up in surprise. Tinee Bloom, who lived in the next-to-the-last house at the end of the block, was standing at the edge of the path with her dog, Barney, on a leash. True to her name, Tinee Bloom favored clothing with vivid floral designs, and the green-and-purple, knee-length float dress she was wearing this morning was no exception.

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