Page 31 of Fortune’s Control (Fortune’s Creek #1)

“You’re sexy.”

My forehead wrinkled as I stared down at myself. “It’s one of your old shirts.” Stealing Shane’s clothes was my newest hobby. “I also just finished brushing my hair.” The tight curls around my forehead always went crazy after I brushed them.

“Even sexier.”

Shane stripped down to his boxer briefs. I licked my lips, appreciating the view.

After our friends left, we cleaned the kitchen again and turned off the lights. Their unexpected appearance waylaid our relaxing evening together, but I didn’t mind. We ended up having a different kind of fun, and now he was here with me, clad in boxer briefs.

He sat on the bed, with his back towards me, and stretched, allowing me to appreciate every line and sinew. I wrapped my arms around him and nuzzled into the space where his back and shoulders met. Shane’s warmth seeped into me as I indulged in the hard feel of his skin against mine.

“Long day?” he asked. Shane kneaded the muscles in his left thigh, pressing his thumbs into his skin with careful movements.

“Long, but worth it.” I watched him for a moment. “Is your leg bothering you?”

“No more than usual. It gets tired at night. My prosthetist warned me about pushing myself too hard, and I don’t always listen as well as I should.”

“I’m shocked to hear that.”

His kneading stopped. Shane twisted so we faced each other. “Your sarcasm deserves an award. Also, I listen very well; the problem is I don’t give people the response they hope for. For example, you brought up my leg.” His grin undercut the sharpness of his words.

“Out of concern.”

“Duly noted. However, we’ll now talk about your questions from earlier today instead of my leg. Do you see what I did there?” Shane made a circular motion with his index finger. “Those are more important, so tell me about them.”

“Wilson Skane didn’t kill his ex-girlfriend. I don’t care if there were other witnesses or evidence. He didn’t confess, and even if he did, I wouldn’t believe that either. I’m not saying this because someone tried to run me over.”

Shane’s features softened with concern. He leaned against the headboard and tapped his chest. “Come here.”

I curled against him as his comforting arms enveloped me. “Did you know this position always makes it better?”

He hummed a gentle laugh. “Funny, because I could say the same. Do you think the detectives are framing Wilson Skane?”

Detective Davis’s concern was genuine. He made a point of checking on me several times after the murder. His partner was an old-fashioned jerk. “No, they’re eager to close a case, and my uncertainty gets in the way. The thing is, ever since their visit, I’ve been more sure.”

“Well, that makes sense. If the man in that car doesn’t look like him, then it should be obvious, even to them.”

“That’s not it. It’s not the picture or the attack.”

“Then you remembered something.”

“No, that’s not it.” That wasn’t correct either, so I tried again. “I remembered that I remembered something. I know that doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes sense. Have you ever heard of phantom pain?”

He referenced that before. “From your leg?”

Shane’s voice lowered as a hint of vulnerability entered it. “It itches from mosquito bites, and I can feel soap on it when I shower. I can close my eyes and find my ankle. The worst pain I’ve experienced isn’t where the surgeons cut; it’s in the part they took away. I know what you mean.”

Shane was there the first time I felt someone watching me, and I described a ghost presence to explain it.

He’d listened then, and later, when I confessed to witnessing a murder.

It was like standing next to myself and watching it through the other me’s eyes.

His immediate understanding and the trust it showed gave me the courage to keep going.

“I can’t prove anything, and the police dismissed me. But he said I was next.” Shane nodded, encouraging me to keep going. I took a calming breath, and my confidence grew. “He planned to kill me because I saw him. He left me those pictures to scare me.”

“Do you still have them?”

I snorted. “I try to forget they exist. The pictures were meant to either scare me into silence or to terrorize me. They worked because I left Atlanta right after getting them.”

“You think he planned her murder?” Shane said as his understanding grew.

“I don’t think Sandy Cooper died because she made her ex-boyfriend angry.

Wilson Skane is a creep and a loser, which makes it easy to pin the blame on him, but that doesn’t mean he’s guilty.

Someone else did it, and I can almost remember how I know.

Almost.” Shane kept silent, but his faith in me showed in his eyes.

I kept going. “It will come to me. When it does, I want to tell the detectives. It could be enough for them to believe me. Also, there’s more. ”

“Is there more that you remember?”

I pulled myself from his arms and retrieved my laptop. “I check on him.”

“Him? Do you mean our suspect?” Shane opened my laptop and turned it toward me when the login screen appeared. “It wants your password.”

I gulped. “It’s my name, followed by 123. Don’t judge.”

“No judgment, but we will change that.” He shook his head in disbelief and entered the password. “It’s a website for a Tampa news station,” he said once the laptop finished logging in and a screen appeared. He swung it towards me. “What are we looking for?”

“You asked if I had a theory. If Wilson Skane didn’t do it, someone else did. He broke the streetlights first, which means planning, as you said. Someone who plans is the sort that sees me as a loose end.”

“You think our suspect has done it before?”

Shane referred to him as our suspect twice now. “That’s why I check to see if another woman like Sandy Cooper died. If that happens, then I’m right, and maybe the police will believe me. It’s not all in my head.”

“You witnessed something traumatic, Lilah. It was never in your head. Has it happened again?”

“No, not once, but I plan to keep checking. If I’m right, he’ll do it again.”

“Why Tampa?” Shane pulled up the local crime section and scanned the headlines. “There’s nothing here.” He bobbed his head and tried again. “There’s a lot here, but nothing stands out.”

“I check everywhere. All the major cities.”

“What have you found?”

“It’s like you said—lots of horrible things, but not the right thing. Either I’m mistaken, and it was Wilson Skane, or he’s hiding. That’s why I never believed in myself. Plus, I’m not a detective.”

“Maybe he was hiding before.” Shane pulled up an Atlanta news site. “We went to Atlanta for a family vacation when I was a kid, and I remember not being impressed with the aquarium. There’s nothing here either, and no updates on Wilson Skane. A car dealership caught fire yesterday.”

“No updates.” I batted his arm as an idea hit me. “What if the update already happened? I don’t know how to search for that.”

“I might. Let me call Dean.” He grabbed his phone and scrolled through his contacts. “Hey. You’re on speakerphone.”

“I was in bed. What do you need?”

Shane took my hand, intertwining our fingers. “ Can you do us a favor? Lilah is here with me.”

“Lilah is there? Hold on, let me turn on a light.” A yawn came through the speaker. “Do you need me to come over?”

He offered to come over before hearing the request. Emma would do the same for me. I’m unused to depending on other people besides her, and still navigating the newness of it. I squeezed Shane’s hand. His presence made it easy. “I don’t think so. How would we find out about an older crime?”

“An older crime? Like, how old are we talking about?”

“A year?” I guessed.

“Can Alex find out if we give you a few parameters?” Shane asked

He looked at me and nodded. “A young woman who wears glasses,” I said.

“That’s a broad description,” Dean said.

I opened my mouth to apologize, but Shane cut me off. “Is it possible?”

“Oh, hell. I’m a game warden. I prefer animals to homicide. Let me talk to Alex and see.” Dean ended the call.

“Who’s Alex?” I asked.

“He grew up here in Fortune’s Creek, with us. He moved away for college, with big plans of joining the FBI.”

“What happened?”

“His dreams shrank. Alex comes home every so often, so you might meet him one day.”

Was this Lainey’s Alex? “I’ve heard that name before.” One day implied an event far into the future. I gulped, trying and failing to summon the needed courage to point that out. “I guess we’re amateur detectives now.”

“What do you want to do if we’re right about this?” Shane asked. He shut the laptop, signaling the end of our evening’s detective work.

I wouldn’t pretend anymore, no matter what Dean found. “If we’re right, call Wilson Skane’s defense attorney. He wasn’t interested before, but maybe this would change it. ”

“I think that’s a wise idea.”

“I should have done this before now.”

“No, absolutely not,” Shane said. I almost believed his matter-of-fact declaration. “You were frightened and a victim, too. No one should expect perfect recall or decision-making after that.”

“I ran away.”

“He threatened you, Lilah. Saving other people means that sometimes you save yourself first. That’s what they teach you before every flight, isn’t it? Do not feel guilty.”

Saying and doing don’t always match up, and Shane’s insistence didn’t match my reality. “Maybe.”

“We’ll figure it out together.”

I drew my hand into a fist to cover my mouth. “I’m not used to asking for help.”

The admittance was galling. Shane grew up in a town that revered him, was raised by parents who loved him, and was looked after by friends who cared.

I had Emma. If you can only lean on one person, you learn to ration your requests.

She stepped up every time, but she also had her own life, with family challenges and personal struggles.

Sometimes, learning is hard.

“I’m not helping you, Lilah. I’m working beside you because that’s what partners do.”

I wish he’d used a different word. It wasn’t jealousy I felt toward Shane, not even close, because I couldn’t blame the people around him, not when I loved him, too.

“You stumbled on a woman who needed gas station rules explained to her, and now you might face down a killer.”

Shane dropped the laptop on the floor and leaned back against the headboard. “Come here.” He beckoned me close, dragging my hips until I sat astride him. “I never stumbled on you. That wasn’t a coincidence.”

I thought back. “Yes, you happened to be there and explained about Willard.”

“I followed you.” Shane sucked in his lower lip at my confused expression. “You can’t stumble on a person you sought out.”

“You followed me? From where?” Also, why did his confession thrill me so much?

“I was in Pete’s gallery when you walked past the storefront window.

You didn’t notice me, but I saw you.” Shane looked up at me through his thick lashes.

“You crossed your arms like so,” he said, demonstrating the gesture.

“I had just finished telling Pete good night and was already late meeting up with my friends. I followed you instead.”

“Did I seem that pathetic?”

He drew back, shocked. “No, not at all. You caught my interest, and sometimes your brain tells you to act without understanding why. I listened, and now here we are. It turned out to be a wise decision. So the next time you think you’re in the way or making it difficult, remember, I’m the one who started it. I’m the one who went after you.”

“Shane, I-” My words didn’t form. Experience told me to protest or question his motives, but that would be unfair.

Shane picked his words, but he was always honest, even forcibly blunt.

If he considered an action ill-advised or foolish, he’d say so.

What did he say? He never regretted his choices. Not once. “You mean it.”

“You know me very well.”

The night we met, right before that awkward wedding ceremony, Shane claimed I didn’t know him at all. He’d declared it with a dry half-smile and a hint of impatience. He was correct then.

“I’m starting to.” He was still correct.

“You’re getting it.” Shane squeezed my hips and let his hands slide up my side to my breasts. “Get undressed, so we can keep getting to know one another.”

I threw off his shirt and, with his help, pulled my panties off as Shane shoved his boxer briefs down. He stroked himself and gazed at me with questioning eyes .

I lifted my hips, inviting the long, thick length of his cock between my slit.

“You’re wet.”

“That happens when you’re around.”

Shane’s neck jerked. “Fuck. On top of me. Now.”

“Is that a request or an order?”

Shane sucked on a nipple as his dark eyes turned to black fire. “I don’t make requests, and I’m used to being obeyed.”

To prove it, he lifted and pushed me down. I sank onto him with an eager hiss as my neck fell back.

Our bodies rocked and moved together, leaving me keening until he exploded with a roar.

Meow! Pirate jumped on the bed and stretched.

“Kitty.”

I went to pet her, but Shane pulled me back, so I stayed on top of him. “You belong here, not her.”

“She sleeps with us now, remember?”

“She does not.”

Pirate pranced across the bed to headbutt his shoulder. She sniffed his neck and upper arm before judging me with a one-eyed stare.

“I’m lucky, aren’t I?” I asked her.

Rather than answer, Pirate walked to the furthest corner and curled into a ball.

“She acts like she belongs here,” he complained.

“Can you blame her?” I asked.

I wanted to belong here, too, with Shane every night. Could you blame me?