Then he skimmed a crooked finger over her cheek and caught the damp ends of her hair. "You got soaked, didn't you?"
"Head to toe," she managed to say.
He let his finger slide under her jaw and tilted her face up toward him, then slowly lowered his mouth to hers. He gave her another chance to scoot inside, to back him off, if she'd wanted to. But she didn't, and instead she parted her lips slightly, taking in a small breath as his mouth touched hers. He pulled back a little, and she thought that'd be the end of it, but she was wrong. He cupped his hand at the back of her head and kissed her for a long time, letting his mouth play against hers.
Her blanket slipped off her shoulders, and her flimsy bathrobe fell open, exposing the swell of her breasts but, mercifully, not her nipples. Her skin was overheated now; the contrast to the chilly air seemed erotic.
He trailed one hand down her throat, let his fingertip skim over the curve of one breast before he took in a sharp breath and whispered into her mouth, "I need to stop now or I won't." He stood up straight, but his gaze shot straight to her breasts, his jaw tightening as he raked one hand through his hair. "Hell, Zoe."
"I don't know." Her voice was hoarse, and she quickly tugged her blanket back over her shoulders. "At least my kiss this morning wasn't a toe-curler."
"Oh, you don't think so?"
"It was spur-of-the-moment."
"Ah-ha."
"It was."
"So you think I walked out here with the specific intention of kissing you?"
She swallowed. "I didn't say that."
"Where'd you get the robe?"
Her throat was tight, dry, and she could feel her skin tingling under her blanket, wondered what she'd have done if he hadn't pulled back. Made love to him out here on the porch? Let him carry her inside? She shook off the images. "Bedroom closet. It reminds me of Lucy Ricardo, except I don't have red hair."
He went to the porch door and pulled it open with more force than was necessary, and she realized he was on edge, fighting for self-control. His muscles seemed tensed, his back rigid. He glanced back at her. "Your sis-ter's invited us to dinner tonight."
His clenched teeth undermined the normality of his words. Zoe took a quick breath, remembered Stick's warning about him. An undercover agent who'd killed a man in front of his children. Who'd almost been killed himself. A potentially dangerous man who was supposed to be in Maine cooling his heels, not getting mixed up in a year-old murder investigation.
She took a breath and followed his lead, keeping her words mundane. "Both of us?"
"Yes, ma'am." His eyes sparkled, his humor back as abruptly as it had vanished. "Probably the whole town saw you kiss me this morning. We're an item."
"McGrath!" Zoe almost jumped out of her chair but saw his quirk of a smile and stopped herself. "You're kidding, right?"
"You need to be kidded more, Detective. Life's been damn serious for you for too long."
"For you, too, don't you think?"
"Absolutely. That's why I picked Goose Harbor for my vacation."
She leaned back, wiggling her toes inside her heavy socks. "Is it? I don't know, Special Agent McGrath. I don't think Teddy Shelton's told me the whole story about why he's here. But neither have you."
"I haven't known you two whole days," he said. "I haven't told you the whole story about anything."
And he smiled, winked and headed back inside.
Zoe flopped back against her chair, sighed at the porch ceiling, then made herself pour another cup of tea. An erotic, toe-curling kiss, a dunk in the harbor and a million questions had her reeling. Her peppermint-lic-orice tea would calm her down. She didn't need warming up, not anymore.
What could J. B. McGrath possibly be hiding?
She shook her head at the simplicity of her question, because she had a feeling there was nothing simple about her houseguest.
And she knew how insidious the aftereffects of a traumatic experience could be. Her former colleagues in the state police and her father's small, shattered police force in town had all been more than patient with her in the first weeks after his murder. They understood she'd just wanted to find out who'd shot him on an isolated stretch of Goose Harbor coast and why.
It wasn't the wanting that got her into trouble-it was pushing herself, and them, beyond all reason. She'd made a pain of herself, complained about the lack of progress in the investigation, demanded answers to questions she knew they weren't going to answer. She meddled. She didn't believe she was somehow magically better than her former colleagues because her father was the victim, or because the FBI had accepted her as a new trainee-she simply couldn't stop herself.
The last straw was when her criticism of the slow progress of the investigation ended up in the Goose Harbor News. The Boston media picked up the story.
Finally, Stick Monroe had called her over for a visit.
They'd stood in his garden as he'd stirred his compost and read her the riot act. If the FBI found out she was handling this crisis this badly, they'd boot her. She could forget the academy. Kiss her career goodbye. "We all understand," he said. "Zoe, I know it's hard, but it's not your case. If you keep this up, you're going to end up on the wrong side of a jail cell, never mind get dis-invited to the academy and lose friends."
She hadn't cared, not then. It wasn't that she didn't want to-she couldn't step back from the brink of her own need to keep acting, doing, not thinking. She remembered thrusting her chin out at her old friend. "I found him, Stick. I saw his blood mixing with the sand and saltwater. I felt for his pulse. His skin was cool, mot-tled-you know, that bluish-purple marbled effect bodies get-"
"Stop it, Zoe."
"I can't!"
"That's why you need to let CID do their job."
She'd fought tears, felt so out of control, more than she'd ever experienced in her life, even when her mother died-because both her father and her aunt had been there then, anchoring her, absorbing some of her trauma. "Aunt Olivia-if I hadn't told her-"
"She still would have died, Zoe." Stick was patient, firm. "You know that. She knew it. She'd been working on revising her obituary that morning before you arrived."
"I feel so terrible. I've made such an ass of myself."
"No, you haven't. Patrick was a good man. We all miss him. We all hate what happened to him. But it's time to back off."
All the rage and fight had gone out of her as she watched Stick use his pitchfork to turn over rich, black dirt made from scraps from his yard and kitchen, his special worms, his care and time-most of all, time. She didn't say a word. She just stared at that new soil and listened to the birds overhead, felt the warm autumn sun on her back contrasting with the cool breeze coming up from the water. No wonder he'd retired to Goose Harbor. No wonder her father and her great-aunt and her sister had stayed.
Then, still saying nothing, she'd turned on her heel and left. She packed up her car that afternoon and headed south. She stayed in Boston for a few days and bowed out of the FBI Academy. Forget it. She wasn't coming. She contacted people she knew who didn't live in Maine, and within two weeks, she was offered the job as the sole detective in Bluefield, Connecticut.
And now here she was, back again. Her problems hadn't changed. Her father was still dead, her aunt was still dead, and a murderer was still on the loose.
Sixteen
Betsy ate a double-chocolate brownie from Christina's Café as she walked up Ocean Drive to the house where she'd spent two years of her life. If Zoe was there and let her in, it would be the first time Betsy had been into Olivia West's house since her former charge's funeral.
Those awful days last October weren't easy to think about.
Olivia had been a forceful but engaging personality, and her fame had given Betsy's work a certain cachet. She wasn't the caregiver for just any old woman, but the creator of Jen Periwinkle.