For Her Eyes Only Part 2

“What?” she said with a sigh.

“I never said I didn’t want you.”

“But you let me go. It’s all the same thing.”

“I tried marriage and failed…miserably. I’m not stupid. I don’t intend to make the same mistake twice.”

She blinked through tears.

“But I’m not Naomi.”

He looked down at her tousled hair and tear-filled eyes and pulled her close, pressing her face against the center of his chest. For a moment, he neither moved nor breathed as a longing for something more than they’d had before hit him deep.

“I know who you are, Jessie Leigh. I remember the feel of your skin beneath my fingers. I—”

Brenda’s shout echoed down the hall.

“Coffee’s done!”

Startled by her sister’s untimely intrusion, she made a face and then sighed. “Rusty nails. Why wasn’t I born an only child?”

Stone stepped back, grateful that he’d been saved from making another serious mistake. It didn’t matter—couldn’t matter—how much he wanted Jessie, or how much he cared for her. He’d been down that road before, and there was nothing at the end of it but trouble.

* * *

Long after Stone and Brenda were gone, Jessica lay in her bed, imagining she could still feel the imprint of Stone’s mouth upon her lips and his breath upon her face. She closed her eyes, cuddling a pillow against her breast because she needed to be held and it was the closest thing to comfort she was going to receive.

Chapter Six

It Was Murder!

The glaring headlines of the Grand Springs Herald on Friday morning were causing an uproar all over the city. Gossip abounded as the news of Olivia Stuart’s death was given a new and macabre twist.

It was common knowledge that the mayor had been publicly and vocally opposed to a strip mining consortium that was trying to establish backing within the community so they could renew their lease. Fingers of suspicion could be pointed in any number of directions, but there was no proof linking the naysayers to Olivia Stuart’s death.

Other than the autopsy report, the detectives assigned to the case had few clues, and none that would stand up in court.

And, to Stone’s dismay, although it had yet to appear in the paper, he’d already heard whispers on the street about a secret witness having a psychic vision about the murder.

If Jessica Hanson was to be believed, and Stone had no reason to doubt her now, then the killer was a woman who preferred red fingernail polish and the scent of gardenias. For a man trained to deal in physical facts, it was one hell of a pitiful lead with which to start a case.

* * *

Jessica Hanson was one of the few people in the city who should not have been shocked by the morning headlines, yet when she picked the paper up off her front lawn and opened it on the way to the house, she saw the headline and stumbled, stubbing her toe on a crack in the concrete.

Ignoring the pain, she stood barefoot on her walkway, with the tail of her robe trailing in dew-damp grass, and read—from the headline, to the byline, to the last period that ended the piece.

“Isn’t it awful?”

Startled that she was no longer alone, Jessica looked up in surprise. Tinee Bloom, who lived in the next-to-the-last house at the end of the block, was standing at the edge of the path with her dog, Barney, on a leash. True to her name, Tinee Bloom favored clothing with vivid floral designs, and the green-and-purple, knee-length float dress she was wearing this morning was no exception.