about it?”
Again she felt Jack expel a deep sigh. “Because I’m attempting to be noble here and you’re making it damn hard.”
“Noble?” Olivia wasn’t sure she liked the sound of this.
“All right, if you must know, I’m asking you to put me out of my misery and marry me.”
For a wild moment Olivia was too stunned to react. “Jack, are you proposing?”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. I want us to be together, Olivia. I love you. The way things stand now, all we get are the leftovers of each other’s lives—and I want more. I want you to be in my life and I want to be in yours.”
She stared at him, eyes wide.
“I want to be there when you wake up in the morning and at your side when you get into bed at night, and all the in-between times, too.”
This was romantic, and romance was the last thing she expected from Jack Griffin.
“I don’t know how to say it any plainer than that,” he concluded.
“Then what was all this business about Stan?” If he told her he’d willingly step aside for her ex-husband, she was going to shove his head underwater, dammit!
“Yes, well, I was going to tell you—” He hesitated. “No, I won’t.”
“Won’t what?”
“Won’t let Stan have you. I thought I could do it, but as far as I’m concerned, the hell with him.”
Olivia leaned back and rewarded him with a long, breath-stealing kiss followed by a series of short kisses down the side of his neck. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Go on,” she urged.
Jack’s arms tightened around her. “I’m never letting you go again, Olivia. I’m only half alive without you.”
She felt a burst of happiness, and her body seemed so light, so buoyant, she thought she could soar straight up to the stars.
Jack took her by the shoulders and turned her sideways so he could look her full in the face. “Will you marry me, Olivia?”
She blinked back tears and nodded. “Oh, yes, Jack.” Then she was in his arms again and he was kissing her with an abandon that sent the blood surging through her veins. This was the beginning for them, a beginning that would last the rest of their lives.
A small piece of information had been niggling at the back of Roy McAfee’s mind ever since he’d met Hannah Russell. It took him ten days to figure out what it was. Patience almost always paid off; the facts hidden in his memory usually emerged if he gave them time. But now he’d glimpsed the elusive detail and he needed to talk to someone.
Consequently, he showed up at the sheriff’s office first thing Monday morning. Davis was sitting at his desk and seemed unsurprised when Roy walked into his office.
“You’re up and about pretty early,” Davis said, looking up from the paperwork spread across his desk. “Anything I can do for you?”
“That depends.”
Davis gestured toward the empty seat.
“I’ve been giving some thought to our meeting with Russell’s daughter,” Roy said as he sat down.
The sheriff steepled his fingers. “And?”
“You wouldn’t still have a list of Russell’s personal effects, would you?”
“I do. Mind my asking what you want it for?”
“I’d like to look at it again,” Roy told him.
“Any particular reason?” Davis flipped open a file folder that lay on the edge of his credenza, then left the office for a moment. Roy could hear the hum of the copy machine.
Davis returned, handed him the sheet and sat down again. He reviewed the list along with Roy. “There were his clothes,” Roy read aloud. “Nothing unusual there. A good suit, a long dark raincoat and a wide-brimmed hat.”
Davis nodded as he glanced over the items. “His daughter said he’d taken to wearing the hat after the accident.”
Roy lifted his head. Thus far, everything seemed as it should. “Anything else catch your attention?”
“His briefcase, of course.”
Roy would’ve liked the opportunity to search that himself before it’d been released to Hannah.
As if reading his thoughts, Davis said, “Nothing there. I checked it myself. No secret compartments or anything to indicate it had been tampered with in any way.”
Of course not. That would’ve been too easy, Roy thought. “What about the contents?”
Davis smiled, but it wasn’t a smile that conveyed amusement. “He had a crossword puzzle book, a mystery novel and a map of the area, plus a couple of candy bars. For someone who’d traveled this far, he packed pretty light.”
“How about his suitcase?”
Davis frowned. “Two changes of clothes, as you can see on this list. We turned that bag inside out looking for something that would give us a clue about who he was. I’m telling you right now, there wasn’t a damn thing out of the ordinary.”
Roy believed him.
Davis hesitated. “It seems to me you’ve studied that list a couple of times in the last few months. Why all the interest now?”
“I’ve got a feeling.”
“Tell me about your feeling and I’ll tell you about mine.”
Roy nodded; that was fair. “Do you remember, when Russell’s daughter was at the Beldons’, she mentioned the automobile accident that killed her mother?”
“I remember.”
“She said her father claimed something had gone wrong with the steering.”
“According to the report, the accident investigator found nothing,” Davis reminded him.
“Right,” Roy agreed, but they both knew there were ways to disguise the true cause of an accident. In addition, there’d been a fire, the same fire that had badly burned Russell’s face and hands. The blaze could easily have destroyed any evidence of foul play.
“Well?” Davis asked.
“We still don’t know what killed Russell.”
“We know his heart stopped beating. What we don’t know is why. But then, as the medical examiner said, the guy was in his late fifties, had been to war and back, and survived one hell of a car accident. Maybe it was just his time. He went peacefully, the doc said.”
Roy nodded, but he wasn’t buying any of it. “As I recall, there was something else
