He flicked his tongue over her nipple again. “I think you’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever met.” He cupped his lips around the nipple, holding it in his mouth as his tongue did its work and she started to melt. He released it, saying, “I love your dark eyes,” then captured it again.

Barely able to sit up any longer, Abigail ran one hand up his back. “Never mind my eyes. I’m-”

“And your heart.” He let go of her nipple and sat up higher, so that his eyes were level with hers. “I love your heart. You’re not cynical. You’ve seen the worst that human nature can offer, and you still believe in the rest of us.”

She sank back onto the bed, taking him with her. “Don’t be too sure,” she whispered. “Just make love to me again. Now. If you can…”

“Oh, I can,” he whispered back, taking her hand and guiding it to him.

As she stroked him, she pressed him against her most sensitive flesh, slowly, the hard tip inflaming her. When he entered her this time, he didn’t move. He filled her up with him and held her close.

“I’m falling in love with you, Abigail,” he said. “I have been for a long time.”

This time, their lovemaking was slow and tender as they explored each other, giving as well as taking, a meeting of souls and not just of bodies. She could feel his release starting and moved in such a way to heighten it. He moaned, shuddering with each thrust.

She didn’t think she’d have another orgasm-didn’t care-but before she realized what was happening, it was upon her, rocking her to her core.

“Owen,” she said. “Owen, I…”

But she couldn’t get another word out. She was done, exhausted. Satiated. She rolled into him, aware only of his arms around her as she fell asleep.

Doyle kissed his sons good-night and lumbered downstairs as if he were a million years old. Will Browning in his last days at ninety-five had walked with more of a spring in his step.

No one thought this thing with Mattie would end well.

He’d gone on self-destructive binges before, but luck and friends would walk him back from the brink. This time, luck meant not that he’d passed out before getting behind the wheel of a car but that Abigail Browning hadn’t caught him cutting her phone wires or pawing through her house. Armed or not, she’d have nailed his skinny ass.

Luck meant he hadn’t nicked her deeper with the drywall saw.

And friends.

Mattie might have other friends he could count on, but Doyle was through. The DUI over the winter had just about done him in. If Mattie had been bugging Abigail with the anonymous calls-if he’d attacked her-there was just no going back to any kind of tolerance between them. Any kind of friendship, no matter how ragged.

The stupid bastard was working an angle.

It was one thing to hurt himself. It was another thing altogether to hurt other people.

And yet when he sat down at his computer and opened up an e-mail to Katie, Doyle’s first words betrayed his anguish.

“I’m worried about Mattie.”

CHAPTER 24

Bob O’Reilly took one look at Abigail on her front doorstep and scowled. “Damn it, Browning.”

“What? Do I have dirt on my nose or something?”

But she knew what he meant. With the fog burning off, she’d put on shorts and a T-shirt, and he could see her scraped arm-she’d pulled off the gauze wrap-and the lower edge of her bandaged thigh.

“Looks like you need a refresher on how to fight off a man with a saw.”

“I did fight him off.”

It was eight o’clock in the morning, but she’d awakened early in Owen’s bed and beat a path back to her place for a hot shower, coffee and a get-a-grip session with herself. A good thing, because she wouldn’t have wanted O’Reilly showing up unannounced and not finding her there. Having him privy to her love life or lack thereof in Boston was bad enough-one of the unintended consequences of him living two floors above her.

Explaining Owen Garrison would have been impossible. Abigail wasn’t sure she understood what had happened last night herself. Whatever was going on between them wasn’t just a fling. She knew that much.

“What are you doing here?” she asked Bob. “Taking a break from city life? Is it too hot in Boston, or is there nothing for an experienced detective like yourself to do?”

“You know why I’m here.”

She did, indeed. She’d have headed north if he’d been the one attacked.

“Scoop would be here, but he’s working a case right now. He said I have his permission to smack you up the side of the head for him, too.”

“And you boys wonder why you have trouble with women.”

“I don’t have trouble with women. It’s relationships that kill me.”

“This is what I’m saying.”

He stood at the bottom of the steps. He wore jeans and a navy polo shirt, yet no one would mistake him for anything but a cop. “And you’re not a woman. You’re a detective.”

“Ha-ha.”

He walked up the steps, and she moved aside, letting him go in first. He made a face at the brightly-colored entry. “The blue’s a change.”

“Doesn’t it remind you of lupine?”

“Right. Yeah. First thing I thought of.”

She smiled. Bob was even worse with plants than she was. “Lupines aren’t native to Maine, actually. They’re a Japanese import. They’ve naturalized.”

“Been reading about lupines?”

“Ellis Cooper told me.”

“Ellis, the amateur landscape designer whose brother is about to sell his summer house out from under him.”

“He has a pink lupine in his garden that’s incredible.”

Bob moved into her front room; he’d obviously heard enough about lupines. “Your assailant was hiding in here?” He didn’t tone down his skepticism. “How the hell did you miss him?”

“Because he wasn’t in here.” She walked past him into the back room and pointed to the short hall that led past the cellar door and into the kitchen. “He must have heard me coming and ducked in there.”

“Why not just run through the kitchen and out the front door?”

“Because I’d have heard him and followed him.”

“And he knew that,” Bob said with just a hint of a challenge.

“It’s a logical conclusion-”

“For someone who knows you’re a police officer.” He nodded in agreement. “Otherwise, you’d just get out of here and try not to be seen.”

“Another indicator it was Mattie Young.”

“No word on his whereabouts?”

Abigail shook her head. “You heard he was holed up in Ellis’s garden shed?”

“Yeah. Lou Beeler gave me a call late last night.”

“Lou? Why?”

Bob’s expression told her that he wasn’t buying any pretense of confusion on her part. He said, “No one wants to see you get hurt or spin out of control.”

“Thank you for your concern, but-”

“But nothing.” He pulled open her porch door, the cool morning breeze gusting into the small room. “Turning out to be a nice day. I left Boston at two o’clock this morning.”

“If you want to take a nap, you’re welcome to crash upstairs.”

“I don’t want to take a nap, Abigail.”

At least he was using her first name again. “Coffee?”

“I drank a gallon on the way up here.” Standing in the doorway, he looked back, scanning her half-gutted room. “You do all this work yourself?”

She nodded. “Wielding a sledgehammer is a great tension reliever. Helps focus the mind.”

“I’d have helped. Scoop, too.”

“I know.”

“Leave the rest for us. We can all come up one weekend-”

“Bob, I’m not going back to Boston until I figure out what’s going on up here.”

“Yeah.” He gave her a grudging smile. “It was worth a try.”

“At least let me make you breakfast,” she said.

But he was staring out at the water, tufts of fog yet to burn off, lobster boats making their way to the buoys that marked their dozens of pots. “It’s gorgeous here. I remember when I first stood right in this spot. The scenery literally takes your breath away.” Without turning, he went on, “I couldn’t help thinking what a damn shame it was for this beauty to be marred by the memories you have.”