The Darkest Corner Read online

  They’d be lucky if they all came out of it alive by the end.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Tess tried her best to avoid Deacon the rest of the day, but she found herself sneaking glances, looking for him as she went about her day-to-day business.

  She didn’t need complications in her life, and she had a feeling Deacon would be a big complication. Once she’d finished working on Mrs. Schriever and the lady was presentable, Axel and Elias helped Tess lift her into the casket and roll her into slumber room one.

  Something weird was going on. Elias and Axel had both given her an odd look, and they were both quiet. That wasn’t unusual for Axel, but Elias pretty much talked all the time, so she knew something was up when he barely uttered a few words and got to work.

  She’d had no clue where Deacon had spent the rest of his afternoon. He was almost always there to help her set up a viewing. Setting up the guestbook, chairs, and preparing the cookies and coffee. And if there was rain, like there had been all day, then he made sure there was space for umbrellas and wet things, so people weren’t dripping all over Mrs. Schriever.

  Elias and Axel knew the drill as well as Deacon, but their silence was so unnerving she gave them a shopping list of supplies she needed from the mortuary supply center and had them make a trip into the city just to get them out from underfoot. They were being too weird. Or maybe she was just being weird because one kiss from Deacon had made her an insane person.

  Deciding that if she didn’t get a fresh cup of coffee now she probably wouldn’t get one before the end of the night, she headed out of slumber room one and put her hand on the newel post on the stairs to swing around the corner. Deacon stood about a foot in front of her, and she let out an unladylike squeak before slapping her hand over her heart in surprise.

  “Good grief. You’re quiet as the dead. You just missed Axel and Elias. They headed over to Keaton’s to pick up a few things.”

  She decided to give him a taste of his own medicine and move around him like he’d done with her earlier that morning.

  He moved to the side and blocked her.

  “Your pipes are rattling in your bathroom. I can hear them outside.”

  She raised a brow in confusion. “Oh, did you want me to go put on my overalls and grab a wrench? I’m sure I can have it fixed in a jiffy.”

  He rolled his eyes and she tried to move past him again, with no success. “If you weren’t so quick to interrupt, you would’ve heard me offer to fix them for you.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Do you mean, ‘Oh, Deacon, thank you so much for offering’?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t push it.” He grinned and she tried to move around him once again. He was making her crazy. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen this playful side of him before.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll make sure I’m done by the time guests start arriving.”

  “I . . .”

  But he didn’t hear what she was going to say. He moved around her and headed off to presumably go get his tools. Her mouth hung open, and she found she was a little perturbed that he’d once again been the one to walk away.

  “I was going to say thank you,” she yelled after him. “You rude . . . man.” She heard his chuckle just before she heard the door close to the garage. She shook her head and stomped off toward the kitchen for her coffee.

  SHE WAS MAKING him crazy.

  He’d spent the better part of his afternoon observing Levi while he went through each stage of the psych evaluations. It wasn’t pleasant. He’d strapped him into the chair and attached the virtual reality goggles to his head. And then he’d punched play on the program that had been designed specifically for Gravediggers, and hoped like hell Levi was strong enough to withstand it. Each phase of the testing got more difficult. It wasn’t easy for someone with the most rested mind and body. He couldn’t imagine what it was like after just having woken up from a death induced by medication that caused hallucinations, when it was a struggle to keep the contents of your stomach down and the headaches were debilitating. It was normally a five-day minimum before psych evals could be administered.

  Tess had never left his mind. And that was dangerous. Distractions in his line of work could be catastrophic. After watching Levi tortured for two hours, recalling Eve’s words about using Tess however he could, and thinking of kissing Tess again, he was in a damned foul mood by the time he unhooked Levi and all but carried his sweat-soaked body back to the bed.

  What he needed was physical labor, which immediately made him think about laying Tess out on the first available surface and doing wicked things to her. Since that wasn’t the best idea, considering all the cameras, he figured hammering something might be the next best option. And Tess’s pipes were at the top of the list.

  He’d caught sight of her on the cameras, and he could tell she was agitated about something because her hair had grown a couple of sizes by the time she finally told Elias and Axel to hit the road. He waited until they were out of the picture to tell her about her noisy pipes, and then it didn’t take much poking and prodding to get her all riled up.

  He must have some kind of sickness, because watching her cheeks color and her hair practically crackle with energy had made him feel a whole lot better than he had when he’d walked into the house. And now he had the plus of putting tools in his hand and getting rid of the rest of his frustration.

  “Ohmigod,” she said, standing in the doorway of what had been her bathroom.

  He’d been waiting for it.

  “Ohmigod,” she said again.

  “You already said that,” he said. “It’ll look worse before it looks better. Trust me.”

  Tess threw up her hands in frustration. “I thought you were just going to fix the pipes. How am I supposed to shower? Where are the walls? Where’s all my stuff?”

  “That’s a lot of questions,” he said. “And I am fixing your pipes. But the pipes are the least of your problems in here. The floor is rotted and none of the plumbing or electrical is up to code. It’s amazing you haven’t electrocuted yourself. No wonder your hair always looks like you’ve just been shocked.”

  She scowled at him and he couldn’t help but grin. Her freckles had turned white with rage. Boy, was she mad. Her jaw was clenched tight, and he was willing to bet her fingernails were making little indents on the palms of her hands.

  “How long is this going to take?” she asked hotly. “About a hundred people are going to be walking in the door in the next half hour to pay their respects to Mrs. Schriever, and it sounds like a demolition derby up here.”

  “It’ll take a couple of weeks.” He remembered the time frame for the mission and then added, “Maybe longer.” Like several months, he added silently. Because though he could do the work, he wasn’t a contractor.

  “How much longer?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

  “Maybe four weeks.”

  “My bathroom is going to be a disaster area for a month?” Her voice was hoarse with the restraint she was showing. “So for the next month I’m supposed to haul all my stuff to the first floor to shower? That’s super-convenient.”

  The sarcasm wasn’t lost on him, but he played along anyway. “I think so. You’ll be right there by the coffeemaker, and after you do an embalming you can walk straight into the shower so you’re not trailing that smell all over the house.”

  “The smell is part of the job,” she said primly. “And it dissipates.”

  “Right,” he said and then changed the subject. “I’ll get the guys to give me a hand up here when they’re not doing anything else. All you need to do is pick the tiles and fixtures. It’s going to look great.”

  Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but no more words came out. “Are you saying the smell doesn’t dissipate?” she asked, going back to the other topic.

  “I’m teasing. Of course it dissipates. The smell of you drives me crazy. Lemons and sunshine. Tess, I’ve got to tell you something,�
� he said, taking a step toward her.

  “Is it that you can have everything in here put back together by midnight tonight?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t want to hear it.”

  He grinned and she narrowed her eyes in warning as he took another step closer. “You should probably watch your blood pressure. It can’t be good for your health to repress all that anger.”

  She took a deep breath. And then another. He was surprised fire didn’t shoot from her nostrils. He took another step closer, but she was concentrating so hard on breathing he wasn’t sure she noticed.

  “I don’t think I started having blood pressure problems until you decided to kiss me,” she said. “Then it ramped up pretty good. Why did you do that again?”

  “Because I couldn’t stay away from you any longer,” he rasped. “I can’t stop thinking about kissing you.”

  Her eyes widened and she looked up as he took another step closer. “You can’t?”

  “Maybe if I kiss you again I’ll be able to stop.”

  She nodded. “I’m a scientist,” she said.

  He paused and looked at her with confusion. “Okay.” And then he started to lean down to take her lips.

  “I just mean I like experiments. And it’s like an experiment to see if you’ll want to kiss me again after you kiss me one more time. I talk a lot when I’m nervous, by the way.”

  “I’ve noticed that. Let me help.” He leaned down and took her mouth before she could say anything else.

  He was almost positive she’d stopped breathing. Hell, he wasn’t sure he was still breathing. He nipped at her bottom lip and her mouth opened with a gasp. And he devoured. His tongue swept into her mouth and tangled with hers, the taste of her dark and rich and intoxicating. And this time he put his hands on her.

  Blood rushed through his veins and his heart hammered in his chest. He knew what it was to want a woman. But he’d never known what it felt like to need a woman. Not just any woman. Only Tess. She’d bewitched him, and one kiss would never be enough.

  When he finally pulled back, Tess’s eyelids blinked open and she looked a bit dazed. Her breaths came in rapid pants and her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat.

  She hadn’t let go of him. He hoped she never would.

  “Did it work?” she whispered.

  “Did what work?”

  “The experiment. Do you still want to kiss me?”

  “No,” he told her.

  Her head jerked up in surprise, but he tightened his arms around her before she could pull away.

  “I want to do more than kiss you.” He kissed the corner of her mouth and then kissed his way down her jawline and to her neck. “I want to strip you out of that ugly jacket and see where these freckles go.”

  “You think my jacket is ugly?” she asked.

  “Hideous. It covers up that beautiful body.”

  She snorted out a laugh. “I’m built like a boy.”

  “I’ve been a boy. I can tell you with certainty I never looked like you do.”

  His hands traced the subtle curve of her hips up to the slight indentation of her waist. She sucked in a breath as his fingers trailed higher, over her ribs and to the soft swell at the bottom of her breasts. She was small-boned and the curves she did have were slight and delicate. But there was no mistaking her for a boy.

  He pushed the jacket from her shoulders and it fell to the bathroom floor. She wore a simple camisole beneath it, and he could see the tight beads of her nipples through the thin fabric.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  “That’s my funeral jacket.”

  “We can bury it later.” He bent to kiss her again, but her head snapped up. If he hadn’t moved out of the way, she would’ve snapped his jaw closed.

  “Funeral!” she said. “There’s a viewing downstairs. I’ve got to go.” She looked around and then noticed her jacket on the bathroom floor. The grimy, Sheetrock- and tile-covered bathroom floor.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no.” She picked up the ugly jacket between two fingers, shaking off the dust. “What have you done? You’re complicating my life.”

  She turned and walked out of the bathroom and into her bedroom suite, muttering under her breath. He followed behind her and hoped she didn’t look in the mirror. He’d mussed her hair and the side of her neck was red from where he’d kissed her.

  “How am I complicating your life?” he asked, leaning against the door frame.

  She was constant motion and energy, and he could’ve watched her all day. She disappeared farther into the closet and his brows rose as the silky shell she’d been wearing came flying out of the closet. She came out a few seconds later buttoning a black blouse with thin white pinstripes.

  “What kind of funeral home director goes to a viewing without a jacket?” she said, her irritation obvious.

  “I’ll get you a new one,” he told her. Her scowl could’ve melted a lesser man.

  “Size four,” she said. “Nothing fancy.”

  It was everything he could do to hold in a laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just had . . . fun. Since his first day at the CIA fifteen years ago he’d had nothing but the weight of the world, literally, on his shoulders. There’d been no family he could share it with. No wife he could confide in. Only his own thoughts and the knowledge that if he didn’t get the job done, then no one would.

  “Try not to destroy anything else,” she threw over her shoulder, heading toward the door.

  “You never told me how I’m complicating your life. You like kissing me.”

  Tess turned back around. “Let’s not get cocky,” she said. “Of course I like kissing you. But the timing is bad. I’m leaving Last Stop. I’ve got other things on the horizon.”

  “Your grandmother will miss you.”

  “She can come visit. When did you learn to speak Russian?” she asked, changing the subject. She did that often. Talking with her was like following a tornado. “You answered me this morning when I swore at you.”

  “That’s top secret information, and you’ve got other things on the horizon. Where are you going to go?”

  “Maybe Austin or San Antonio. Somewhere with a population large enough for a steady business.”

  “That’s morbid.”

  “Morbidity is my business,” she said with a shrug. And then she looked at him oddly. “Yours too.”

  “You have no idea,” he said. “Have dinner with me.”

  “I told you. I’m leaving.”

  “Okay, let’s skip dinner and go straight to bed.”

  She laughed.

  “No,” she said, grinning, and she was gone back down the stairs almost before he could blink.

  “Stop telling me no,” he called after her, repeating her from earlier that day.

  Her laughter followed her down the stairs.

  Deacon felt a pang of remorse for what he was doing. There was no question he wanted her. He liked her. But he was pulling her into a game she’d never be able to escape. And she might very well hate him for it someday.

  Suddenly, he wasn’t sure he could stand to be hated by Tess Sherman.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Friday mornings gave Tess heartburn. Theodora had that effect on people.

  The viewing the night before had gone off without a hitch, and no one had mentioned the fact that she wasn’t wearing a jacket, though there’d be another opportunity to notice the following morning when they put Mrs. Schriever in the ground.

  The rain had finally stopped sometime during the night, and since it was summer and they were in Texas, it meant stepping outside felt like being in one of those microwaveable steam-fresh bags.

  She dressed in a pair of white capris and wore a loose linen shirt in light beige. She put on white sandals and slathered moisturizing sunscreen on her face. Her hair was its usual mass of curls, but it was a little more subdued today so she left it down.

  Tess winced when she looked at the clo
ck, and then ran down both flights of stairs, cursing Lucifer as he hissed at her and wove between her feet. When he got to the bottom he lay down right in front of the first step and stared at her, daring her to step on him.

  “It’d serve you right,” she said, hopping over him and heading toward the garage.

  Her grandmother liked to be driven around in the black Suburban that was used for funeral processions. She said it made her look like the Secret Service. Tess grabbed her purse off the hook by the door and went into the garage to get into the Suburban. She dropped her keys, and they managed to go under the Suburban just far enough that she had to get down to look for them, so she put down her purse and bear crawled, wishing she hadn’t chosen white pants for the day.

  Time was her enemy. The sooner she got out of there the better chance she had at not running into Deacon. She’d delayed going back upstairs the night before, wondering what she’d do if he was still in her bathroom wearing ripped jeans and a tool belt. It was a hell of a time for her sex drive to make an appearance—right when she was making plans to change her future. The smart thing to do would be to stay far away from Deacon Tucker.

  She’d never been any good at resisting things she wanted. Like when she was eight and found three kittens in a drainage ditch. She’d put them down her shirt and told her grandmother they’d followed her home. Of course, her chest and stomach had been scratched to pieces, so that story hadn’t gone over so well. Or when she’d had tickets to see the Backstreet Boys in concert, but she’d been grounded. She’d decided the consequences of standing in that sea of hormones would be well worth the punishment she’d receive when she got home. She’d been right.

  She had a feeling whatever happened between her and Deacon would be pretty similar—a sea of hormones followed by a great deal of time in the confessional. She was non-practicing Russian Orthodox.

  She hit the button on the visor and the garage door opened. She backed out quickly and got a quick glimpse of Deacon’s motorcycle and a flash of movement as he came around the side of the carriage house in badass boots, jeans that fit like a glove, a tight white T-shirt, and his helmet in his hand.