“I’ll miss Maria, but she doesn’t need me. Not like you do. She has Ophelia back, as safe as I could possibly make it, and I know she still sleeps with that bat by her bedside. Besides, Sly’ll be looking out for her. She’ll be fine.”
That was the last thing Tess expected to hear. “Sly? Deputy Collins?” When he nodded, she shook her head in surprise. “Wow. I mean… there was that one time I thought maybe, but— but I didn’t know.”
“Nobody does. They’ve hidden it very well. But I’m a big brother and, no matter what Caity used to say, a pretty good detective. I figured it out ages ago. I’m glad.” Reaching out, he caressed her cheek, letting his hand trail down the slender line of her throat. “I want her to have something even a little as special as what we have, mia cuore.”
Italian. Unlike Maria, who let the language slip regularly, she only ever heard him speak it when he tenderly called her mia cuore. My heart. The same thing he pledged to her from the start, when she was a silly little girl who wanted something she couldn't have.
Except now she had it.
To his surprise, her bottom lip started to quiver again. A second later, she pushed against his arm. “Let me up.”
“Tessa—”
“Please, Luc. I want to stand.”
Because he would give her the world if she asked it of him, he dropped his arms down so that she was free. Tessa climbed out of his lap and moved out of the living room.
He hated having even that much distance between them.
It struck him that, with Jack and Caitlin dead and gone, he didn’t have to stay away from her anymore. Pushing up off of the couch, he shadowed her. She went into the kitchen, bracing her hands against the sink. Folding his bigger body around hers, Lucas rested his chin on her shoulder, breathing in her sweet cinnamon scent.
This delicious morsel was all his. The realization staggered him. Tessa belonged to him now. It made everything he had done worth it.
If only she was as happy about that as he was. She had to be. He would make sure of it.
Lucas loved her too much to accept anything less.
“Tessa. What’s wrong? What else has you tied in knots?” She shivered as his murmured words tickled her neck. Chills ran up and down her spine, goosebumps popping up all over her exposed skin. “Tell me. I’ll make it all better. You know I will.”
He was so distracting. Part of her wanted to just give in, let Lucas take over as he had been doing all along. She couldn’t. This was too important. Tess had to be sure.
“I just… I can’t stop thinking about it. I know why we did it. I don’t see what we could’ve done differently and maybe that makes us monsters, but I don’t care—”
“You’re no monster, mia cuore. You want to blame someone, blame me. It was my idea.”
“And I was with you all the way, Luc. I still am. I love you. I don’t regret a damn thing that happened but… Jesus Christ, what if they believe him? We both gave up so much to have a chance at this, at us. I want to it be worth it, but someone might figure it all out. He can’t give any details, right? Someone might wonder if he’s really as innocent as he claims.”
Because, of course, Mason Walsh was innocent. And while there were only three people in the whole world who knew for a fact that he was innocent of the murders, what if someone else figured it out? What if he could convince someone?
Lucas thought her worries were charming. Ridiculous yet cute at the same time. When he went along with her idea to frame Walsh rather than give him an “accident” like Turner, he did everything he had to to ensure that no one would ever think that the deputy was anything except what Lucas wanted them to believe.
From the moment the Sullivans arrived in Hamlet, he’d been one step ahead of everyone. It really was the perfect crime. No one would ever guess that the respected doctor had anything to do with the murders. And while they might always suspect the outsider, he’d been careful to shield Tessa. This was all for her, after all. He couldn’t stop Caitlin from interrogating his sweet Tessa. He’d never allow anyone else the chance.
Everything he’d done, he’d done for her. For them.
Every little detail and interaction was thought up in advance, planned perfectly and executed flawlessly. Tessa’s airtight alibi. Acting like they never met before, even going so far as to play out their “first” meetings in front of an audience. The threatening note Lucas slipped under her door without any advance warning so that her reaction would be genuine.
Of course, he remembered with a scowl, he never expected Tessa would run right into Walsh which just goes to show that even the best laid plans could have a kink or two in them.
Like when he got shot. Now that was a kink. He’d provided Tessa with the pair of guns he lifted from Caity’s place, instructed her on how to rig them to give the impression that she’d been shot at while in the good doctor’s company. No one in Hamlet would doubt his word as witness. But their aim was erratic at best and Lucas was lucky he was only grazed.
It worked better than he guessed, though. It was tangible proof that even the sheriff couldn’t ignore. The queen of conspiracy theories never once suspected he engineered his own injury. No sane man would ever consider it a plus to be shot.
Then again, he figured he left the last of his sanity far behind the first time a double murder seemed like a viable option for him to get what he wanted.
As for Walsh, being wrongfully imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit was a better fate than what Lucas wanted for him. The foolish deputy could insist he was innocent until he was blue in the face. It wouldn’t do him any good. Lucas buried him in so much circumstantial evidence, Walsh would eventually collapse under the weight of it. He wasn’t dead, but he would wish he was.
And that was good enough for Lucas. Served him right. Six weeks later and he was still touchy that Walsh dared to kiss his Tessa.