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“I haven’t forgotten how you feel inside. I want to be there. In you deep.” His voice was rough and low, his lips aggressive against her raised nipple under her t-shirt. “It may never happen, but the mere thought of any other man being on you, in you…I’d want to kill him.”
He pressed his face against her, breathing hard and hot. Then he came up straight and, clasping her face between his hands, stamped a kiss on her lips. “Now go to sleep.”
Chapter 23
Glenn looked down with distaste at The Major’s hospital breakfast. “I wouldn’t want to eat it, either.”
“I’ll choke it down only because I want to get my strength back.”
“You’ve had a shock to your system. Most bet good money you’d never recover. You’ve beaten the odds so far. Don’t rush it.”
The Major smiled. “That’s exactly what Kerra advised.”
“Kerra advised? When was this?”
“Sometime in the wee hours. She and John sneaked in.”
“They did, huh?” The sheriff propped one buttock on the end corner of the bed and recounted for his friend the telephone conversation he’d had with Trapper the night before. “He was coming back because he’d heard about our suspect. He didn’t say outright that Kerra was with him, but he promised to produce her this morning. Bright and early.” He arched an eyebrow.
The Major took his meaning. “They’re sleeping together.”
“You know John.”
“All too well.”
“They got off to a rocky start,” Glenn told him. “Trapper was mad as hell at her over the earring business, but late that evening, when I went looking for him to tell him you’d regained consciousness, I interrupted a tender moment in her motel room.”
“Back up, Glenn. What earring business?”
“I keep forgetting how much drama you missed that first couple of days.” Glenn told him about Kerra’s missing shoulder bag and the reappearance of one earring. “Though it seems highly unlikely Trapper discovered it under her hospital bed. If her bag didn’t make it to that room, how’d her earring get there?”
“John lied to you?”
“Also to a pair of Texas Rangers.”
“Why would he have taken Kerra’s bag? And when?”
“All of the above remains a mystery. But looks to me like Kerra believed his explanation, no matter how improbable, and he forgave her for suspecting him.”
“Suspecting him of what? Why was he talking to Texas Rangers?”
The sheriff scratched his eyebrow with his thumbnail. “Don’t make me play the tattletale on the boy.”
“He’s not a boy. He’s a man.”
Ill at ease, Glenn fiddled with the leather hatband around his Stetson. “From the get-go Trapper’s been poking into the investigation, hovering around Kerra, wanting to know what she saw, who she saw, if she saw anything. I called him on it, but…”
“He responded to correction in his customary fashion.”
“Basically. But his interest in what happened out at your place drew attention. It seemed more intense than a family member’s wish to catch the bad guys who shot their kin. After the earring thing, the Rangers were ready to put him in lockup and hold him as a possible suspect.”
“For shooting me?”
“I told the Rangers it was horseshit. But, let’s face it, in view of your falling out, which everybody is aware of, he had to be given a hard look.”
“John would never have done it.”
“What I told the Rangers, and I don’t think they really suspected him so much as they disliked his smart-aleck attitude. Anyhow, we had nothing to justify holding him. His alibi for Sunday night checked out. Since then, though, he hasn’t curried any favor by running away with our material witness and keeping her under wraps.
