He pulled away, but kept an arm around her shoulders. “Is she yours?”

She shook her head. “Just a sweet old stray my dad unofficially adopted and took care of.”

With infinite tenderness, he stroked her jaw with the back of his thumb, a simple, quiet reminder that she was no longer alone. “I’m sorry. There are some really sick people in the world. Somebody wanted to hurt you, or to scare you.”

“By slaughtering a poor, defenseless animal.” She shook her head, not knowing why she was surprised. Considering the things she’d witnessed, she knew man was capable of incredible cruelty. She just hadn’t expected to literally stumble across it right on her own doorstep.

He continued to stroke her hair, kind and calm. She suspected he wouldn’t be if she hadn’t tossed the obscenity-smeared doormat into the trash before his arrival.

“Come on, Stace; go inside. Get cleaned up. I’ll finish this.”

She tried to resist, but Dean wouldn’t take no for an answer. With a soft sigh of sadness, he took the rag out of her hands. His expression revealed so much about the man.There was no revulsion, no concern about his clothes, not a wince of distaste. Just tenderness, goodness.

It told her more than she’d known about him to this point. That simple act revealed a man she suspected was a wonderful father to his little boy, a good friend, a loving son and brother. A man with depth.

A man she could care about.

“I’ll take care of her.” He brushed his lips across her temple. “Let somebody help you for a change, okay? You don’t have to do it on your own.”

And suddenly she knew he was right. She didn’t have to do this by herself. Not today.

“Go on inside. I’ll take care of everything.”

God, when was the last time she’d let anyone take care of everything? Or anything at all? She honestly couldn’t remember. She only knew that she trusted Dean, and that it felt good to have someone else to share the burden with, if only for a while.

He helped her to her feet. “Do you want to bury her?” She nodded once. “At my dad’s.” Glancing at the body, she added, “But I can’t tell him everything. Not yet, maybe someday. But for now…”

“We’ll tell him she was hit by a car.”

It was as if he’d read her mind.

“Bring me a box, and some more rags and bleach, too, okay?”

“No, you don’t have to.”

“I know that. But I want to.” He pushed her toward the door. “Just get the stuff; then you go take a shower and try to wash this whole thing off.”

Wash off the ugliness like she’d wash off a day’s worth of dust and sweat? She didn’t think the slick, sticky feel of the blood on her hands would ever wash off. But Stacey couldn’t deny how much she desperately wanted to take him up on his offer.

Unlocking the door with shaking hands, she stepped inside. Her booted feet immediately skidded on the tile floor, leaving twin streaks of red. Emotion welled even higher at the sight, but she swallowed it down. She unlaced and kicked the boots off, then went to the kitchen and got more cleaning supplies and a large box from the garage.

Dean didn’t even let her step outside when she returned with them. “Okay. Now you take a shower.”

Somehow managing to control the disgust, rage, and sorrow, she staggered through the house. With each step, she tore off her clothes and dropped them onto the floor a piece at a time, wanting nothing against her skin. By the time she entered her bedroom, she wore only her underclothes. They were off before she’d gotten to the bathroom door.

The evening remained brutally hot. Most nights she took a cool shower to comfort her overheated body. Now, however, she needed steam and heat in order to feel clean. So she turned the controls as hot as she could stand and stepped inside, closing her eyes and turning her face up to the showerhead like a penitent seeking absolution.

She kept them closed for a long time. Piercing streams of hot water gushed through her hair and down her body. And it wasn’t until she felt sure the soap wouldn’t turn the color of blood that she reached for it and began to wash.

She didn’t know how long she stood there scalding herself, but eventually she reached for the controls and eased the water to a cooler temperature. But the unshed tears behind her eyes continued to burn. She didn’t expect that to stop anytime soon.

She’d just finished rinsing the conditioner from her hair when she heard Dean calling from the next room.

“Hey, you okay in there?”

“I’m fine.” She clenched the shower curtain in her fists, leaning toward the opening in the front. “Are you finished?”

“Everything’s taken care of.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, knowing he wouldn’t hear.

“Listen, maybe I should just go back to the hotel. I need to clean up.”

No. God, no. The very last thing she wanted was to step out of this shower and find herself alone. Alone to pick up her red-stained clothes. Alone to wash the floor. Alone to think about the fact that someone hated her so much he wanted to punish her by killing an innocent animal and spattering its blood across her front door.

Alone to fall into bed and add one more layer to her dark dreams.

“Don’t go,” she said. Realizing she’d whispered again, she cleared her throat. “Dean, please don’t leave.”

Silence. Then, “I’ll wash up in the other bathroom.”

“No.” Leaning her face against the warm tiled wall, she added, “Come in and use this one.”

He didn’t reply at first, and she waited, wondering if she’d just lost her mind. Yes, she’d invited him here tonight fully intending that they’d end the evening in her bed. That was supposed to happen after a beer, some good conversation, more flirting. After at least she’d fixed her hair and maybe scraped a little bit of shadow across her lids. They’d act on the attraction, keep it light and simple, and then proceed.

But now everything was different.

Not only could she barely keep herself upright, but she didn’t look like a woman about to take a lover. She was, in fact, a complete nightmare. Her lips were twisted in grief, her body flushed and reddened from the heat of the water. Her eyes were so damned heavy and sore from unshed tears. Yet she’d asked him to come in.

And that was what he did.

“You holding up?” He stood just inside the doorway, big and powerful, a look of utter tenderness on his face. “Can I do anything?”

That someone so strong and serious could be capable of such compassion and sweetness nearly took her breath away, and she felt on the verge of shattering into a thousand pieces. She hadn’t broken down in… well, ever, really. Yet all the years’ worth of just dealing with things as they came had apparently taken their toll. Because right now, after one small, hateful act, she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to make it one more day.

But with Dean, maybe she could.

There was such a depth of humanity in him. A wealth of goodness and understanding, which was contrary to all the things he had to have seen and investigated in his career.

She envied it. More, she wanted it.

Still mostly blocked by the shower curtain, she managed a single word. “Please.”

His eyes met hers. Sealed the connection. Then, without a word, he reached for the top button of his shirt and slipped it open. Though his gaze remained locked with hers, the strong hands moved down, slowly unbuttoning, until he shrugged the shirt off, tossing it to the floor.

Stacey’s heart thudded as she noted the breadth of his shoulders, his massive chest rippled with muscle, and his flat stomach. Clothed, he’d been powerful and hard. Beneath those clothes was a man built to make even a tall, strong woman like herself feel utterly feminine and delicate. Her body, weak, drained, almost physically battered just moments ago, began to thrum again. Heat skittered through her veins, sending blood pulsing back into places where she’d felt empty for a very long time.