“Well, you’ll be in uniform tomorrow, too,” Harry told him.
“Not me. I’ve got business out of town,” Matt said.
“Matt Stone!” Penny protested. “You can’t go out of town.”
“Penny, I wasn’t going to ride with a unit, no matter what. I was going to be crowd control, you know, act like the sheriff. Thayer can handle it all, though.”
“Matt, Penny has a point,” Adam said. “You should be here. After all, this is Stoneyville.”
“Clint is a Stone. He’ll have to do.”
“Wow. Great. Thanks,” Clint said.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way,” Matt said sheepishly.
“You’re the one so big on tourism, Matt. On showing folks our little piece of Virginia. You’re so gung ho on opening historic houses and buildings. How can you fail to be part of a reenactment?”
“Yeah, Matt!” Clint said.
“I have really important business,” he told them.
“Darcy is going to be part of it,” Clint told him.
“Oh?” Matt arched a brow to her.
She shrugged. “They think I should dress up, at least.”
“What fun!” Lavinia put in. “I’d love to playact.”
“You are more than invited to join us,” Carter said graciously.
“I’ll be there.”
Oola barked, as if agreeing that she’d participate as well, causing them all to laugh.
“Even Oola will be there,” Penny told Matt.
Darcy was surprised to see him suddenly hesitate, which seemed strange. He’d been so definite. “You know,” he said, “there was a General Stone. But he was nowhere near Stoney ville during the fighting. He was surrounding Richmond at the time.”
“Matt, you’ve always taken part before,” Clint reminded him. He looked at Darcy. “He’s usually Ian Ripley, a cavalry captain, like Harry.”
“We’ll see,” Matt said. “I have business, like I told you. But I’ll see how far things have progressed by the morning. Hey, Penny, is something burning?”
“The roast!” Penny said with dismay. She leapt up.
“I’ll help you,” Darcy offered.
As she ran after Penny, Oola followed.
She didn’t go after the food; she just sat in the kitchen. And when they left the kitchen, she sat by Darcy’s feet at the dining room table.
The meal was light, and fun, with everyone talking about the reenactment, and Lavinia bringing them all up to date on her social whirl, while flirting outrageously with every man at the table, including Harry. Still, after the nights they’d been having, it seemed a blessing.
Later, with the place cleaned up, the hour getting late, Matt at last rose to break up the group. “I slept all afternoon, but I’m still bushed. Harry, did you want to stay?”
“Nope, got to go home, thanks,” Harry said.
“There’s lots of room in the caretaker’s cottage,” Lavinia told him. He blushed to the roots—the exact effect she had intended.
“I have to go,” Harry said, “but thanks.”
Matt walked Harry to the door, then came back by Darcy’s chair. She thought she was going to blush herself when he said, “Ready to go up?”
“Um, sure,” she said, trying to sound very casual.
“I’ll just let myself out,” Lavinia said.
“Never! I’ll escort you,” Carter said.
“Hey, I’ll walk with you. He’s dangerous,” Clint teased.
“Really?” Lavinia said. “I like dangerous men.”
Darcy gave Adam a kiss on the cheek and followed Matt up the stairs.
Oola followed her.
She started for the Lee Room.
“Not tonight!” Matt told her. “My place,” he said lightly. “Oola can have the office area. We’ll take the bedroom. Alone. No ladies in white or any other visitors tonight.”
“This house does give new meaning to the term, ‘your place or mine,’” Darcy murmured. With the dog at her heels, she accompanied him.
The minute they locked the dog out of the bedroom area, and turned to one another, she began to whine. They looked at one another and laughed.
“I’m prepared,” Matt told her.
“For a whining dog?”
“You bet.”
He disappeared, then returned smiling. When the door closed, Oola was quiet. Darcy lifted a brow to him.
“Pig’s ear,” Matt said.
“Pardon?”
“She came with a supply of pigs’ ears,” he explained. “Chew toys. And now…well, you really do owe me an apology.”
“I do?”
“For thinking I might have done evil to my ex-wife.”
“I didn’t really think it.”
“Um. Humor me.” He walked to her, embracing her, offering a kiss that was electric and fevered, lips tugging upon hers, tongue all but savage in its raw seduction. The same fevered urgency came damply down the length of her throat, while his fingers, at their most nimble, tugged at buttons and the zipper of her jeans. She ran her own fingers around his waistband, finding his zipper as well, and finding that just the sound of it, and the promise there given was erotic. She might have been the one who owed the apology, but he was creating an arousal and urgency in her that was high-pitched and searing. The stroke of his fingers down the bareness of her back seemed to elicit a burning in the core of her sexuality, and she moved against him wantonly, wondering only in a very distant place in her mind if he might be determined to forget that Lavinia was on his property. Then even the whisper of such a thought eluded her, for his lips were everywhere, a caress that swept over and into her. The scent of him invaded her, and whispering a soft penance, she returned each brush of a fingertip, every steam-tipped stroke of the tongue, every intimacy, until at last they were arching, writhing, straining, and pulsing together toward a maddened crescendo that burst upon Darcy violently, climax racking her body with delicious shudders, loathe to let the least touch, taste, or scent of him leave her. And for the longest time, he did not. She lay against him, hair splayed over the vital dampness of his chest, deliciously drowsy.
She must have been exhausted herself, because she drifted to sleep.
When she woke, she was alone.
“Matt?” she said his name softly, but he wasn’t there.
Puzzled, she opened the door to the office area. And then she could see him. He’d thrown on a robe and was out on the balcony, just staring into the night. He looked like a man in torment. The dog was at his side, and Matt was absently stroking the shepherd’s ears.
Darcy wanted to go to him, but she didn’t. Instead, she stood there watching him, and thinking that if they did or didn’t find the bones soon, it wouldn’t matter. It was time to go. She had allowed this involvement, and encouraged it, lost herself within it. But she was certain that she knew what gave him such anguish.
He did care about her. He really cared.
But no matter what he tried to tell himself, what she was, what she did, mattered to him. He would never be able to look at her without remembering her tearing through the dirt for a bone, or falling into a trance, and not feel repelled.
She determined to leave him in peace. She closed the door and slipped back into bed.
Later, when he returned, she was the aggressor, laughing and teasing at first, then telling him how sorry she was.
Truly, how sorry she was.
Darcy was still sleeping when Matt awoke. He quietly slipped from the bed, showered, dressed, and took Oola downstairs so that she could take a run outside.
Penny was already up; coffee was already on. Matt accepted a cup, slipped into his downstairs office, and called Randy Newton. He didn’t know if he was relieved or impatient when Randy apologized profusely, but between working the crime scene at the mortuary and handling a political death that was suspicious, he hadn’t been able to pull all the records he could find as yet.
“Give me a day, Matt. Hell, that’s nothing in most cases, you know.”
“It’s all right, Randy. I appreciate your help.”
“Hey, tomorrow is Sunday, but I’ll keep working until I get it. My wife is going to hate you, you know.”
“Tell her your workload is my fault.”
“Hey, I have to blame it on someone, huh?”
“I guess,” Matt said. “Honestly, thanks. If you do get anything, anything at all, call me.”
“I can tell you this—whoever broke in to the mortuary wore gloves, and even slipped plastic bags over his shoes. We went over the window screen and the rest of the place for fibers, and came up with zilch. Anyway, I’ll get on those records, though I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. The bones haven’t shown up anywhere, have they?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Go deal with your battle buffs. I’ll call you, I promise, the minute I’ve got something.”
Matt thanked him again and hung up. He drummed his fingers on the desk, feeling antsy, and thinking there had to be something more that he could do. He’d called in the FBI. Best help he could have, and he knew it.
There was a tap at his door and Penny stuck her head in..
“Are you going to have to leave town today?” she asked.
He wished that he could lie.
“No, Penny,” he said honestly.
Her smile lit up her face like a Christmas tree.
“And you’ve already got Thayer in charge of crowd control, right? I mean, of course, I know the society manages things really well, but that you put out the officers as well.”
“I should oversee it all.”
“Matt! Thayer is the best deputy a sheriff ever had. You leave him in control. Come on now, please? I’ve got your Captain Whittaker uniform all ready.”
He groaned. “Penny, I’d told you I probably wasn’t going to be here, and that if I was—”