The Homecoming Read Free Page B

dramatic pause. Then her voice dropped to a near whisper. “A human bone.”
    Despite having assured herself that she’d happily left the fast lane of police work behind in the rearview mirror of her patrol car, Kara experienced a little zing of excitement at Ashley’s breathless announcement.
    “I’m leaving now,” she said. “Meanwhile, tell Douchett, along with whoever else might be out there with him, to stay put and not move around the area. And tell him to lock the dog in the house.”
    If, by any chance, it was an actual crime scene, Kara didn’t need civilians screwing it up.
    After saying good night to Edna, who’d been openly eavesdropping on the one- sided call, Kara left John to wrap things up.
    Then, after calling her mother, with whom she and Trey lived, and letting her know she’d been delayed, Kara headed her black-and-white Crown Vic cruiser out of Shelter Bay toward the coast. And the cliff house that held so many bittersweet memories.

3
    Sax was sitting out in a rocking chair on the porch, staying put, as he’d been instructed by the dispatcher—who’d sounded as if she should’ve been home playing with Barbie dolls rather than answering the phone—when he saw the headlights cutting through the dark.
    “Looks like we’ve got ourselves some company,” he told the dog whose collar he was holding on to. Not that she needed that much restraining, since she was pressed against his leg.
    Velcro barked in happy agreement.
    “Let’s see how enthusiastic you are when you’re locked inside and have to miss all the fun.” He took a pull on the bottle of beer, then pushed to his feet. “Let’s go.”
    The mutt, always eager to please her benefactor, raced inside.
    Feeling like a traitor, Sax shut the door behind her, then ambled down the steps toward the gravel driveway.
    Having expected John O’Roarke, he was momentarily surprised to see the long female leg come out of the driver’s side of the car. The leg, currently covered in a really ugly pair of khaki trousers, was followed by a girl he remembered well.
    No. No longer a girl, he considered as Kara Conway strode toward the house. During the decade since he’d last seen her, along with ditching those glasses that had given her the look of a studious owl, she’d shed her gangly teenage frame for a woman’s slender curves.
    Her hair, which she’d once worn to the middle of her back, was pulled shorter, accentuating her long neck.
    Sweet .
    Her face, like her body, was fuller than it had been back when she was in high school, but her cheekbones could still cut crystal, and as she entered the circle of light created by the porch lamp, the yellow glow caught sparks in almond-shaped eyes nearly the same deep, burnished reddish gold of her hair.
    Damn. Until Jared’s death, Sax had almost managed to put Kara Blanchard Conway out of his memory. Even on the rare occasions he’d think of her, he’d assured himself that she was no longer that seventeen-year-old girl who’d kissed him silly the night of the prom. She’d been married a long time. Had a kid. Spent the intervening years as a cop, and although he knew those doughnut stories were a cliché, lots of cops seemed to get butt spread riding around in a patrol car all day.
    Not this one.
    “If I’d known an old bone would get me a visit from a beautiful woman, I’d have started digging up the beach a long time ago,” he said in his best bad-boy drawl. Which would probably piss her off. Which would undoubtedly be a good thing. Because getting mixed up with any woman right now wasn’t in the cards. Getting mixed up with this woman would be a mistake of major proportions.
    She paused for just a heartbeat, obviously surprised by such a personal opening gambit. Hell, he’d surprised himself. Then again, as he’d discovered that long-ago night, not only had Kara always had him acting in ways he’d sure as hell never planned, but she was also an enticing surprise wrapped in an