Hold on to Me by Linda Winfree Read Free Book Online Page A

Gina get that? She’d always planned to tell him. God, she’d thought about it for months , waiting for him to come home from Mississippi. She’d practiced the damn words an infinite number of ways.
    When he’d walked into her office that rainy morning, his dark gaze alight with joy and hunger, she hadn’t been able to do it. Somehow, killing that joy by sending him away seemed more right than telling the truth, watching the hunger be replaced by duty.
    If she’d told him, he’d have stayed and she’d never have known why. She wasn’t doing that to either of them. At least this way, he didn’t have to live with it every day. He could move on.
    “This is going to blow up in your face, Cait. I know it and so do you.”
    “Look, Gina. He’s the poster boy for the perfect family man. Loves his mom, loves kids, wants a house full of them one day.” She choked over the words, over the lump of tears pushing up in her throat, and swallowed a curse. “I’m here to assist on a case. Do the job, get out, don’t get involved. Just like always. Nothing’s going to happen because I’m not going to let it.”
    She turned back toward the hotel, retracing her steps. A Chandler County sheriff’s car pulled into the gravel lot, its tinted windows hiding the driver. It paused behind the pickup truck, brake lights flaring, before it purred onto the street again.
    “Listen.” Affectionate worry softened Gina’s tone. “If you need anything—”
    “I won’t.” She glanced at her watch. Long enough to shower, get herself together before she headed into the lion’s den once more. “I have to go.”
    For long moments after she broke the connection, she concentrated on steadying her breathing, fighting back another wave of stupid, hopeless tears.
    * * *
    The squad room lay quiet and deserted. A subdued rumble of activity drifted up the stairs from the dispatch area, mixing with the scent of stale coffee lingering in the air.
    The few bites of chile relleno Tick had forced himself to eat formed a lump in his stomach. He tucked his cigarettes in his pocket, the two he’d smoked back-to-back on the way over here not really settling him down.
    He paused in the doorway to the conference room. Jeff and Cookie were nowhere in sight. Caitlin sat, reading the red leather-bound journal they’d taken from Amy’s room, a cup from the local java joint at her elbow. He watched her, the thick black silk of her hair pulled into a loose knot, the Fibbie suit traded for jeans and a simple white T-shirt under a neat seersucker jacket. One loafer-clad foot tapped the floor, a frown of concentration wrinkling her brow.
    Damn, she was beautiful.
    Beautiful and scarred. Not visibly damaged, but something had stolen her away from him.
    Damned if he wasn’t going to find out what. If he was trapped into this working arrangement, so was she. This time, he’d make it a hell of a lot harder for her to dodge the issue.
    “Find anything interesting?”
    She startled like a scalded cat. The diary slid to the floor and one flailing hand collided with her coffee, sending the dark liquid across the table.
    “Oh, hell!” She jumped to her feet and righted the cup. He grabbed a handful of napkins from the shelf by the door and began mopping up the mess. She glared, her eyes big and dark with fury in her pale face. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, Calvert.”
    “Who’s sneaking?” He dropped the sopping mass of napkins in the trash. “I just walked into my own department and asked a simple question.”
    She leaned down to retrieve the book, but he reached it first. They straightened and he proffered it, merely the length of the volume between them. She took it from him with ill grace. “A little advance warning would be nice.”
    “You’re awful jumpy.” He studied her as she sank into the chair again. The color didn’t return to her face and tiny tremors shook her slender fingers. A warning flag waved in his mind.
    “I was