But…still. She couldn’t help but think something about this was off. Or maybe she was just letting her emotions toward Carrie affect her. Hell, she thought as she grabbed her purse and keys from the table beside her door and jogged down the steps, she’d been letting her animosity toward Carrie skew her thinking for months.
Why should this change anything?
Except she had decided earlier that she was going to get over this. She wasn’t going to let Carrie and Co. matter anymore.
Meeting Kellan at the bottom of the stairs, she looked into his eyes-soft, warm, hazel eyes. He had taken his glasses off. He had looked awfully good with them on, like a sexy scholar.
Of course, he looked good without them too.
He just looked damned good.
She just loved his eyes. She’d love to photograph his eyes, those wide-spaced, heavily lashed, warm, hazel eyes.
Was it her imagination or did they look just a little warmer as he stared at her?
“Let’s get this over with,” she said quietly.
Her attorney of record wasn’t exactly equipped to defend her against a murder charge, but Darci wasn’t a fool. As she rode in the back of Kellan’s cruiser, she pulled out her cell phone and called Brittany Daugherty.
“Darci, I was just getting ready to come over. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything but-”
“Britt, I’m in the Sheriff’s car, riding over to the station,” she interrupted. “I think it would be a good idea for you to meet me down there.”
“Oh, shit. I was afraid this would happen. Don’t say anything, don’t tell them anything-”
“I already have told them some stuff, but it was just where I was last night. I was at Clive’s all evening. But they want to take my statement, ask some official questions,” she said. As she spoke, she glanced up and met Kellan’s glance in the rearview mirror.
He was studying her with an arched brow.
She flushed and licked her lips and dragged her gaze away, but she could still feel him staring at her.
“I’d like you to meet me there, Britt,” she said, lowering her voice. “The whole damn town knows that Carrie and I had some bad history between us. And half of the town is still convinced she was a saint…”
“The Wicked Witch is more like it,” Britt interjected. “But we can’t let anybody hear you talking like that. Don’t say anything else. And I mean anything. Not until I get there. So zip it.”
Once Brittany hung up the phone, Darci sighed and flipped hers closed, tossing it into her purse.
“So, what does your lawyer have to say?”
Arching a brow at him, she drew an imaginary zipper across the seam of her lips and turned the lock, before leaning her head back. Damn it. She needed to think.
Because if she thought long and hard enough, surely she’d come up with the reasons she had moved to Vevey to begin with.
At least she’d taken that white nightshirt off. If he had been forced to question her while she had been wearing that nightie, the hint of her nipples teasing him, he was certain he would have gone mad.
He was about to lose it anyway.
Damn it, this was too much.
Kellan had avoided her like the plague for the past few years. And just for this very reason. The scent of her skin drove him insane. The thought of being close enough to touch all of that smooth white skin, yet resisting, was enough to make him want to drag her by the hair to the closest private place and just throw her to the ground and mount her. To see the sparkle of her emerald green eyes and hear the low husky caress of her voice as she spoke-
Damn it. He was going to drive himself crazy.
And they hadn’t even gotten started yet.
This was the longest time he had ever spent in her company. And the closest. The scent of her skin was permanently embedded on his memory and he was certain that her mouth would be every bit as sweet and soft as it looked.
Fuck.
He had kept his attraction to her from becoming an obsession just by keeping his distance.
And now that distance had been totally smashed. How could he stay away from her now?
But how could he do anything with a woman who was involved in a murder investigation?
Hell, she hadn’t done it. He knew that as well as he knew his own name. But she was involved in it. Somehow. Something Carrie had done had pissed somebody off so much that the person had snapped.
And lately, all her tricks and bullshit seemed to revolve around Darci, Becka, or the gallery.
As Britt sailed in, her bouncy blonde curls secured in a ponytail, she grinned sunnily at Kellan and asked easily, “How’s Michaela doing?”
He smiled and said, “Fat and pregnant, last I heard.”
“Shouldn’t be calling your sister fat. She’s just…plump. A baby can do that, I’ve heard,” Britt said as she settled onto the hard chair, flipping open her briefcase and drawing out a yellow legal pad and a pen. After perching a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on her nose, she flicked Kellan a glance and said, “I’ll need a moment to speak with my client, if you don’t mind.”
Kellan sighed and said, “She’s not under arrest. I just need to take a statement, ask her some questions.”
Brittany smiled serenely. “That is all well and good. But I really should know a few things before you ask her those questions.” She arched her brows and waited.
Kellan scowled and tossed his pen down on the table. He pushed his glasses up on top of his head and left the room, shaking his head as he closed the door behind him.
He made a beeline for his office and went straight for the coffeepot, pushing the button, knowing JT already had it ready to brew. She had seen him come in and had huffed her way in here, mumbling about overtime and how a body just couldn’t get any sleep.
And she had the pot waiting for him, so he could have coffee as soon as he wanted it.
Loveable old biddy.
As soon as there was enough for a cup, he grabbed the pot and poured one, wincing as footsteps came down the hall, hoping it wasn’t JT. If she knew he was letting coffee splatter on the warming unit again, she’d have his hide. But the footsteps went on past, and he sipped at the hot brew and sighed with pleasure while coffee hissed and bubbled on the heating unit.
Oh, yeah, JT would skin him.
But as long as he cleaned up his mess, they’d be fine.
Darci toyed with the cross at her neck as she repeated, almost word for word, how she had spent her night. “Okay,” Britt finally said, smiling with satisfaction. “Clive is almost gold around here. If he says you were at his place, then nobody will doubt him.”
“Gee, thanks,” Darci said sarcastically.
Britt laughed. “Honey, you know by now how things are here. They like you, a lot. But you’re still the new kid. Hell, you’ll be new after you’ve lived here fifty years. But Clive, well, he wasn’t born here, but his daddy was, and he’s been here since he was a kid and around here, he is a fixture. And he likes you. All in all, that is a damned good thing. You’ve got plenty of witnesses and an unimpeachable alibi.” Patting Darci on the knee, she said, “Small-town life, babe. Don’t you love it?”
Darci groused through the rest of the questions, twisting her rings ‘round and ‘round on her fingers, replaying yesterday through her mind. You have got to be the saddest most pathetic creature…
It was the truth. She knew that.
But all she could see was the bright flash of pain that had appeared in Carrie’s eyes for the quickest of seconds. The moment of truth.
It was truth.
For a second, Carrie had been forced to stop hiding from it. And she had hated Darci for it.