Kiss in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

brutal precision learned from years as a private investigator. He could almost hear Lance and Bethany arguing, the elevated voices, the desperation. Hear her telling him to leave. See his cousin grabbing her wrists and squeezing. Hurting.
    “Bethany.” His voice broke on her name. “Did Lance do this to you?” Tell me no, he thought savagely. Tell me no!
    She blinked at him. “Would you care if he did?”
    Once, he would have killed. “Answer me, damn it!”
    “Let go.” The words were soft, but carried unmistakable strength. Strength the girl she’d been had not possessed. Strength that would have threatened the St. Croix prince.
    “Maybe the two of you were arguing,” he theorized ruthlessly. He needed to crack through her control, and a toothpick wouldn’t cut it. “Things got out of hand and Lance lost his cool, got rough. Maybe he even found out about—”
    “No!” She jerked her hands from his and backed away. “That’s not how it happened.” The wind whipped long locks of hair against her mouth, but this time neither of them moved to slide the silky strands back. “I told you— someone knocked me out when I walked in the door.”
    Dylan studied her standing there against the darkness, that skimpy robe falling open at the chest and revealing too much cleavage. He didn’t need to be a seasoned detective to see the secrets in her eyes. The fear. He didn’t need to be a man practiced in seeing through pretenses to notice how badly she trembled.
    But he did need Herculean strength to keep his hands off her.
    Too damn well, too intimately, he knew how passion could blind and distort, make even the most rational person snap like a sapling in a gale force wind.
    He’d just never thought passion played a role in Bethany and Lance’s relationship. The thought, the reality that it might have, made him a little crazy.
    “If it was self-defense, you need to tell me.” He tried to speak casually now, to match calm with calm, but the horror was like a rusty stake driven through his core. “If he grabbed you, tossed you around—”
      “No—”
    “You wanted him to leave,” he pushed on, needing to hear her denial as badly as he’d ever needed anything. Even her. “He wouldn’t. Maybe he grabbed you. You only picked up the fire poker to protect yourself. You never meant to hurt—”
    “Stop!” she shouted, lifting a hand as though to physically destroy his nasty scenario.
    He caught her wrist, just barely resisting the crazy desire to pull her into his arms. He knew better than putting a snub-nose to his temple.
    “I wish I could stop,” he said as levelly as he could. “But I can’t. Don’t you understand what’s going on here? Lance is dead and his blood is on your hands.”
    The change came over her visibly, the glacierlike wall she used to separate herself from the world slipping into place with eerie precision. “I don’t owe you any explanations.”
    Come back, he wanted to shout, but for the first time Dylan could remember, he envied her the ability to isolate herself from what she felt. He wanted to do that now, to shut himself off from the horror and the rage and the fractured grief that splattered through him like vivid splashes of color all mixed together until nothing was discernable except for dark, jagged smudges.
    But lack of feeling was her specialty, not his. “You may not owe me anything,” he said, “but the cops are a different story.” He glanced toward the door, where Zito stood watching. “And their questions are going to be a hell of a lot harder.”
    She lifted her chin in a masterful gesture of cool defiance that was pure Bethany. “If you’re trying to reenact the crime, it’s not going to work. The fire poker is inside.”
    The words were soft, but they landed like crashing boulders. He looked down at his big hand manacling her slender wrist, the nasty bruises completely hidden. It was a miracle whoever roughed her up hadn’t snapped the small bone in