His Brother's Bride

“You get some sleep.”

“Yeah, you too.”

“I will. See you in the morning.” He couldn’t hang up, didn’t want to be left alone in the darkness to fight his demons.

“Okay.” Her voice was sleepy sounding, and Scott’s body responded all over again, growing hard where it had no business being hard.

If he couldn’t control his body’s reactions, at least he could control how he responded to them.

And where Laurel was concerned, that meant doing absolutely nothing. Ever again.

He owed it to her. To himself.

And to the brother he’d killed, as well.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SCOTT AND LAUREL WERE at breakfast—plain bagels with raspberry cream cheese—when Officer Bill Murphy, Dennis Arnett’s parole officer, called. He’d just arrived at work to find Scott’s message. Though he was under no obligation to do so, he agreed to meet with Scott later that morning.

“So do you think he’s going to tell us everything he knows about Dennis?” Laurel asked.

Nodding, Scott watched her take a bite of her bagel—and remembered how those lips had tasted the night before.

God, he ached. Now that he’d had a taste of what he’d been craving all these years, how was he ever going to survive being this close to Laurel without touching her?

“Don’t tell me you had a favor to call in in Worcester, too,” Laurel said.

“As luck would have it.” Scott had always been lucky when it came to his job. Another reason to make his life nothing but work.

They’d stopped at a twenty-four-hour superstore earlier that morning and picked up some essentials plus a change of clothes for each of them. Laurel had put on her new jeans and white blouse in the dressing room at the store.

“Hey,” she said.

He looked up. “What?”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For making sure things weren’t weird this morning.”

Oh, but they were. So weird. No matter how badly she needed his friendship, Scott knew for certain he was going to have to tell her the truth.

“No problem,” he told her. They had a case to solve. Three people to find.

And then he was going to tell her.

He had a strong suspicion that every moment until then was going to be torture. And he didn’t want to think what it would be like once he lost her for good.

* * *

“SCOTT, IT’S GREAT TO finally meet you,” Officer Murphy said as he ushered Scott and Laurel into an interrogation room at the police station, closing the door behind them.

Laurel was silent as Scott, shaking the other man’s hand, returned the compliment.

The two men talked briefly about their mutual acquaintance, an officer Scott had known in the academy who’d asked Scott to pick up Murphy’s runaway niece from a truck stop outside New Ashford the previous year.

“How’s she doing?” Scott asked Murphy now.