“Slow down, Little Kat, we’ve got all night,” he breathed in her ear, which sent up a warning bell from the depths of her drunkeness, a warning she ignored as she let him drive her to the Kincaid ranch.
He wasn’t half as drunk as she was, she realized much later. He knew what he was doing, and did it anyway. She, on the other hand, was beyond hope, and just trying to hang on to some vestige of respectability. “I’m a cop, goddamnit,” she told him proudly as they walked through the house and upstairs to a huge bedroom that opened with double doors. “I don’t drink, and I don’t smoke, and I drive within the speed limit, mostly.”
“You don’t drink?”
“Usually. I don’t drink, usually. But this is a special occason . . . occasion . . . after all, you’re an uncle!”
“I am. That’s for sure.” He nodded. “I did give up smoking. Bad habit. But I do drink, and I always drive at least ten miles over the speed limit.”
“We’re made for each other,” she said happily. “God, this is a big room.”
He looked around as if seeing it for the first time. “Hunter moved out and gave it to me.” He sat down on the end of the bed. “You should drink more,” he told her. “You’re a lot less uptight.”
Kat was immediately incensed. “I’m not uptight.”
“Okay, but you’re a lot less uptight now, so . . .” He shrugged.
“Why is this room so big?” she asked, feeling dizzy as she looked toward the vaulted ceiling.
“It’s the master suite, and I guess I’m the master?”
“No . . .” She laughed.
“I’m not?”
“No . . . wait, are you?”
“Maybe.”
And after that he reached a hand out to her, and she willingly fell into his arms. They kissed like they were drowning for each other, then he pulled her onto his lap and she straddled him, and they began rocking together, and her fingers caressed his beard, and she felt how hard he was beneath her crotch, and she squirmed down on him until they were both gasping and then stripping off their clothes.
She’d had very little experience with sex, except for some trial and errors with a couple of guys from college who’d been more or less test cases rather than serious romances. She’d just never found a guy she wanted that much.
But this was something else. She wanted him. Wanted him driving deep inside her. She wanted to scream and flail and beat her fists on his back. She wanted to arch her back and bite his ear and make love like this was the one and only night in her life.
Well.
She did all that and more. She unbuckled his belt and pulled down his jeans and took him into her mouth as if she’d done it all her life. She heard him groan and pull away, and then she was down on her back, pressed into the satin coverlet, and Blair was atop her, pushing into her, and she was grabbing his butt and helping, begging, wanting everything so fast and hard.
“Jesus, Kat,” he murmured.
“Don’t stop.”
“God, no . . .”
God, no, she thought now, grinding her back teeth together, as she pulled into the parking lot at the east side of the park. The rest of that night was a blur, the morning after embarrassing; she’d tried not to wake him as she gathered up her clothes. A hammering headache hadn’t helped. Nor had the fact that he’d woken up and watched her fumble around as she hopped on one foot to get into her jeans—forget the underwear, she never found it—and struggled with clasping her bra, something she could usually do in her sleep but couldn’t seem to manage, and then she swore under her breath when she saw that two of the buttons had been ripped off her blouse.
He’d gotten to his feet and yanked his own jeans on, also commando style, and said in a drawl she’d found sexy the night before but was like fingernails on a chalkboard the morning after: “You need a ride home.”
“Yes . . .”
His gaze flicked to the mussed covers. Neither of them had made it beneath the sheets. “It’s still early, we could . . . ?”
She felt like hell. No. No. No. But her mouth again said, “Yes.”
And that time, he’d been tender, and she’d floated, somewhere between pleasure and pain, because the horrible hangover that attacked her hadn’t quite come into play yet, and the feel of Blair’s body inside her made so much of it disappear beneath a wave of desire that swept through her womanhood and made her cry out with joy.
She’d gone to work with two little men clanging hammers against a gong inside her head. She’d thrown up twice in the station bathroom, then gone home and crawled into bed feeling like she might die. She’d awakened at two o’clock in the morning, nibbled on cheese and crackers, then forced herself to crawl out of bed to go to work the next day, too. She felt better by that evening—and like a complete idiot. She was scared at how many bad choices she’d made. It was so unlike her.
Blair called her sometime that second night. “How’re you doin’?” he asked.
“Okay,” she lied.
“I’m going out of town, but I’ll be back next Wednesday.”
“Okay.”
“You want to get together again?”
Yes. Of course she did. But this time her brain took over and made her mouth answer the way she should. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Well, sure. I’d like to.”
It was so casual. Too casual. She had a distinct chill run through her when she realized that it was all in a day’s work for Blair Kincaid. No big deal. Happened all the time. And her mind tripped to Paula Gregory, who not that long before had been crying over Blair at Molly’s Diner, blubbering into her cheap Chardonnay. “It’s just sex to him,” she said on a hiccup. “He doesn’t care about me, but I don’t care. I want him, and if I can only have some of him, that’s what I’ll take.” And then the tears had really started flowing, and her girlfriends at the table jumped up to offer handkerchiefs and tissues and mascara and eyeliner for makeup repair.
Kat had felt sorry for her and suddenly saw herself in the same position, crying over Blair Kincaid, who she knew was bad news, romantically speaking.
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” she said, and then she hit the END button on her cell phone.
And that, as they say, had been that.
Did she feel a little sorry? Of course. Was she going to change things? No.
And the baby?
Couldn’t think about that now, she decided, as she pushed open her door, climbed out of the Jeep, and waited for Ruth to park.
*
They walked to a picnic table not far off the path they’d wandered down together fifteen years before. Kat set the recorder and her notepad on the weathered planks of the fir table and settled onto the bench. Ruth sat down opposite her, her eyes on the recorder.
Kat pressed the ON button, aware of the whispering birch leaves above their heads, caused by an errant breeze that had cropped up, and the caw of a rattled crow that clearly didn’t like their interference in its domain. The machine could pick up ambient noises, but it would record their voices loud and clear. Kat stated the date and time, who and where they were, then asked Ruth for permission to record their conversation.
“Yes,” Ruth said in a barely discernible voice. Then, stronger, “Yes.”