Charlie swallowed and took a step back, dragging her eyes away from the spot where that water droplet had disappeared. She raised her gaze to look into that handsome face, those eyes filled with the kind of desire that now coursed red-hot through her veins. She felt something melt inside her.
Daniel had never looked at her like this. Shep was right. Daniel wasn’t the one. He’d never been the one. She’d never felt like this with him. There was only one man who’d ever made her quiver inside like an autumn leaf in the breeze, and he was standing in front of her half naked.
But it was Shep’s mouth and what that mouth had done to her all those years ago that had her pulse thumping. She wanted to kiss him like she’d never wanted to kiss another man.
“Say the word, Charlie,” Shep said quietly.
The word was on the tip of her tongue when his cell phone rang.
Shep let out a curse but didn’t move. His gaze held hers, daring her to tell him to let it ring.
Not tonight, she told herself silently. She wasn’t going from one man’s arms to another in the span of one night, no matter what Amanda thought.
“You’d better get that,” she said, her voice breaking.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BY THE TIME Shep was off the phone with Mulvane, Charlie had gone into her bedroom, tossed his discarded clothing out into the living room and closed the door. He sighed and, smiling to himself, picked up his clothes and headed for the couch.
He considered what the retired homicide cop had told him on the phone only moments before. A man named Jason Harper also had an interest in Lindy Parker’s murder.
“I thought you might want to know,” Mulvane said. “I’d forgotten about him until after you left and I was putting away some of my notes on the case. I saw one I made to myself more recently. The guy lives in Bozeman. I can give you his address.”
Shep had been surprised by the familiar address. What a coincidence that he shared the same one as Daniel, Charlie’s hopefully former boyfriend. So was Jason getting the information for himself—or for his roommate?
Dropping the towel and pulling on his boxers, Shep lay down on the couch and stared up at the ceiling.
As interesting as this lead was, his mind was on Charlie and what could have happened earlier. He still ached at the thought, even though he had to question what he’d been thinking. She’d just broken up with her boyfriend tonight. With everything else that was going on, she didn’t need Shep trying to rekindle their teenage romance.
But the thought made him smile. He didn’t think it would take much rekindling. That old chemistry was still there, just as he’d suspected. It was as if it had been banked for fifteen years and was now ready to burst into flame. This time, even stronger.
Not that he hadn’t wanted to make love with her, even knowing that the timing was all wrong. The pull had been so strong. Daniel was all wrong for her, in Shep’s humble opinion. And if he was being honest, okay, maybe he was jealous. Being here with her had brought back a lot of memories of what the two of them had shared.
He reminded himself that they weren’t teenagers anymore and a lot of water had flowed under that bridge. They weren’t the same people they’d been. But the way he felt about Charlie hadn’t changed.
But it was more than that. He liked her. She was quirky and could drive him crazy without even trying. Ultimately, being around her made him feel capable of Herculean feats.
Shep felt a wave of guilt wash over him. Charlie was in trouble. Instead of lying here pining over her, he should be finding out who was behind the stalking, and putting an end to it. Sighing, he shook his head. He hadn’t even been able to find out who was responsible for the Lindy sightings. Some hero he was.
He turned his thoughts to the problem at hand. The news about Jason Harper nagged at him. What was his interest in Lindy’s murder? If Charlie really hadn’t told anyone, how did Jason even know that Lindy had been her stepsister? Shep had to find out.
But then what? He knew he couldn’t think that far ahead and yet, when Christmas vacation was over, he had to get back to school, back to his classroom, back to his students. He could feel the clock ticking.
Antsy, he looked around the room. There wasn’t anything he could do this late at night but get some rest. Christmas was only days away—not that he could tell it by Charlie’s apartment.
There was a tiny, sad, fake tree with questionable decorations in the corner of the kitchen counter and a few lights strung at the window, but other than that, little Christmas spirit. That just seemed...wrong. He would have to do something about that.
At least that was something he knew he could solve. The Lindy situation was a whole other matter. Not that there had been another sighting. But he’d die trying to put all this behind Charlie once and for all.
* * *
CHARLIE HAD TOSSED and turned all night. Just knowing that Shep was in the next room had driven her crazy. What had almost happened before his phone call? She had just broken up with Daniel and yet if Shep’s phone hadn’t rung when it did...
She told herself she wouldn’t have succumbed that easily to Shep’s charm. She wasn’t a teenager anymore. But she had been more than tempted. She sighed. She could have fallen into his arms so easily...
This morning, she was still shaken. Worse, still tempted. She didn’t feel in her right mind.
So much had been going on. Lindy, Amanda, Greg. She thought about Tara’s baby daughter and the birth and smiled to herself. But now Tara was off for six weeks. Charlie would miss her desperately. But Tara had promised that she would be at Amanda and Greg’s wedding after Christmas—if there was a wedding.
Getting ready for the day, Charlie braced herself for seeing Shep. But when she opened the door, he wasn’t lying half naked on her couch. He was fully dressed in the kitchen. She caught a familiar scent.
“Pancakes?” she asked, her voice breaking with both relief not to find him half naked—and excitement at the prospect of pancakes.
“And bacon,” he said, grinning. “Have a seat. I poured you some orange juice.”
She sat and saw that he also had the newspaper beside her plate—opened to her horoscope. If Shep was trying to get on her good side, he was doing an amazing job of it. Or did this have something to do with what had almost happened last night? Was he trying to make her forget it? Or—
“It stopped snowing,” he said, disrupting her thoughts. It appeared last night had shaken him as much as it had her. “Looks like there’s another storm coming through.”
Charlie found Capricorn and read, worried about what the weekend would bring.
Facing a time of uncertainty in your life?