“You’re taking me to your house?”

Finding the jeans she wanted, she held the phone between her shoulder and ear while putting them on. “Do you know of a better place?”

“Yeah. Here.”

“No. The manager’s a good friend.”

This distracted him. “Is that how you broke into my room? I should sue.”

Peyton couldn’t help smiling at the grumble in his voice. “I got the worst of it. Anyway, I think you have bigger problems to worry about. And she didn’t give me the key. I stole it.”

“Do you still have it?”

“You’re afraid I might come back?”

He hesitated. “Would you want me to have a key to your room?”

Part of her actually wanted to say yes, which was why her voice grew solemn. “I took it back. I said I found it on the floor at a restaurant, and she thought one of the maids accidentally carried it off the premises.” Fortunately, Michelle had been more exasperated than angry so Peyton didn’t have to feel bad for getting a maid in trouble. It would’ve been difficult to place blame, anyway. The smocks were used interchangeably.

“She fell for that?”

“Completely.”

“I should rat you out.”

“If only you could show your face.”

“No one would have to see you come here. We could sneak you in,” he said.

“No. If Michelle saw us, she’d ask all kinds of questions.” Especially if she got a good look at him. “And we can’t go to a restaurant. I’m too familiar to the community, since so many people work at the prison. We’d definitely attract attention.”

“That’s your logic for taking me home?”

She pulled a sweater from its hanger. “That’s it.”

“Peyton—”

His use of her first name took her off guard. Both the inmates and staff at the prison called her Chief Deputy Adams, as he’d done only moments ago. “What?”

“There are people who want me dead. You read that letter, you know what they’re doing to my sister. If they’ve found me, if they’re watching me, they could follow us—”

“They haven’t found you.”

“How do you know?”

Deciding to wear her hair down for a change, she ran a brush through it. “Because you’d already be dead.”

His silence implied that he agreed, but he hadn’t given up arguing with her. “There is one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I was just released from prison, remember?”

“I’m not likely to forget.”

“It doesn’t bother you—make you afraid?”

“According to what I’ve been told, you were innocent.”

“That doesn’t mean I remained innocent. You’re the one who suggested I’ve become…warped.”

She remembered the comment she’d made in the meeting. “Have you ever raped or killed a woman, Virgil?” she asked. “No.”

“Would you if you had the chance?”

“I had the chance yesterday, didn’t I?”

She set her brush on the vanity. “Exactly.”

His voice deepened. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want you.”

The flutter in her stomach surprised her even more than his unexpected admission. She’d been propositioned by a lot of inmates in her day. She’d reacted with annoyance, revulsion, fear, sometimes amusement, but she’d never felt breathtaking excitement. She couldn’t imagine why she’d feel it now, except that it’d been a long time for her, too. Maybe not fourteen years, but two or three. And since Crescent City offered so little in the way of romantic possibility, the future didn’t seem very promising.

“What you want is a woman, any woman,” she said. “That’s hardly flattering.”

“Maybe not any woman,” he responded.

She grinned at the wry note in his voice. “Humor, from an intense guy like you?”

“When everything’s a matter of life and death you tend to get serious very fast.”

“I understand. I’m serious, too, about bringing down the Hells Fury. That means we need to get to work—and I can’t show you pictures over the phone. I guess we could rent a motel room in a different city, where we wouldn’t have to worry about being spotted, but I don’t see how that would be an improvement. If we’re going to be alone it might as well be here.”

“As long as you know not to trust me too much, we’ll be fine.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you just said you wouldn’t hurt me. At least, I think that’s what you meant.”

“I won’t hurt you. But if you give me the opportunity to do the opposite, I’m taking it.”

Oh, God… He thought he was putting her on notice, scaring her off. He probably figured that if he destroyed any chance he had before they were even together, he wouldn’t get his hopes up. But, in reality, he was offering her some of the thrills that’d been so conspicuously missing from her life. “Then I’ll be careful to keep my signals clear.”

“That’s all I ask.”

Now she was worried, but more because of how she might react to him than how he might react to her. “See you in a few minutes.”

5

Virgil was fairly certain that what he stood to lose outweighed what he stood to gain. Driving himself crazy wanting what he couldn’t have had never seemed wise. While in prison, he’d watched other men torture themselves over missing this or that and he made a point of not being so stupid. But he was only human. And, as the chief deputy warden led him up the stairs to her front door, moving slowly because of her ankle, her ass was right at eye level. He couldn’t help admiring it. He’d been seventeen when he’d had his last sexual encounter—with the girl he took to the homecoming dance. They’d dated a few weeks, lost their virginity to each other, continued to experiment for a month or so and that was the extent of it. It probably hadn’t been the best sex in the world, but he would’ve had no experience at all if not for that short period. Three months later he’d been arrested.

Her name was Carrie. He’d dreamed of her soft thighs and breasts a lot since then, but as he aged those dreams had become so old and tired they were as ineffectual as a threadbare shirt. They certainly weren’t as stimulating as a flesh-and-blood woman, especially a woman who looked like Peyton Adams….

As soon as they reached an elevated deck from which he could see the Pacific Ocean, he circumvented her so he could focus on something that didn’t make him instantly hard. Like the barbecue, the picnic table, the trees towering all around or the wind chimes that hung from the eaves and tinkled in the breeze.

“This is nice.” He noted the rhythmic wash of the waves. The ocean sounded even closer than it was. “Peaceful.”

“I like it.”

The house behind him had a wall of windows. He was eager to look in, but only because he wanted to learn more about this woman who seemed so out of place in the prison system.

Once he’d acknowledged the reason for his interest, he knew he’d be a fool to feed his curiosity. He crossed to the banister instead of letting her lead him directly inside. There was no point in getting to know her. Even if he ended up liking her, she’d never feel the same way. He was an ex-con. The fact that he’d been wrongly imprisoned was irrelevant. He’d lost the most important years of his life, the years during which most other men built a foundation that allowed them to support a family. Other than the few classes he’d taken while incarcerated, he had no college education, no career—just a lot of experiences guaranteed to keep him up at night.

It’d be easier, smarter, better, to immediately rule out what his body insisted might be attainable.

“How long have you lived here?” he asked.

“Since I started at Pelican Bay six months ago.”

“So Crescent City is pretty new to you.”

“Yeah.”

“Where did you come from?”

She approached the banister at the other end. “I grew up in Sacramento, where I worked at Folsom Prison for fifteen years.”

“Do you have family in Sacramento?”