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You should talk to Baldwin. He might have an idea of how to approach it. He’s good at that sort of thing.
The moment she turned the screen around and saw Memphis’s eyebrow rise in response, she realized how it must look. She pulled the computer back and tried again.
I didn’t mean it like that. You and I, we’re the same. We understand crime. We understand how criminals think. But serial killers have a different mind-set, and Baldwin knows them. Their motivations aren’t the same. I keep telling him he needs to write a book, something that investigators like us can use as a handbook of sorts.
Memphis drummed his fingers on the table. “I might just do that. Speak with him, that is. I’m not above asking for help when lives are at stake. Because something isn’t right with this case. I just can’t put my finger— Oh, look.”
Memphis directed her gaze to the window, and the North Sea appeared, rough and choppy even in the relatively calm weather. Taylor could swear she smelled the salt in the air.
“We’re getting close now,” he said.
And then suddenly they were in Edinburgh, the Waverly station welcoming in its homely concreteness. They disembarked, her legs wobbly on the pavement, the wine adding to her discomfiture, like she was trying to balance atop a very angry rocking chair.
Memphis took her arm and tucked it into the crook of his elbow, holding her upright. She was suddenly exhausted. It was just morning in Nashville, but the time difference, the overnight flight, the wine, the stress of being with Memphis, waiting for the next volley of flirtations, all of it was catching up to her.
Memphis used one hand to wrangle Taylor’s bag and the other to steer her around to the stairs. They were met at the bottom by a homely man, mid-thirties, hair longer than his collar and swept back with some sort of gel. He stood in front of a battered Range Rover. Memphis introduced him as Jacques, who promptly showered Taylor in a transformative smile showing hugely white Chiclet teeth that had to be dentures, and spoke a few flowery sentences in rapid French that she translated to “Welcome, I’m your driver, if there’s anything you need let me know.”
“Merci,” she managed to say, in a pretty little croak, which earned her another heavenly smile. She watched him turn to open the door, noticed the small lump under his arm. Driver and bodyguard? Why in the world would Memphis have an armed driver? It wouldn’t be unheard of among public figures and high royals, but it seemed like overkill. Memphis was New Scotland Yard, after all. Another of the strange things she would get to ask him about eventually.
She climbed into the back of the truck, happy they weren’t in a fancy car, but again struck by the similarities to her mother’s escapades. Traveling all over Europe, chauffeured by servants. Hypocrisy had its claws in Taylor’s back.
As they pulled out of Waverly and started the trek out of Edinburgh, Taylor was struck by the differences, and the similarities, to her Te
But the trees, and the hills, the smiles and the sense of purpose, all reminded her of home.
She knew Memphis was watching her. Watching her take measure of her surroundings. Imagining her driving these roads, shopping in these stores, eating in these restaurants. Hoping she liked what she saw.
Fitting in.
She was never so glad to be mute as this moment. Her voice would have betrayed her.
She saw water up ahead, a wide river. The bridge looked like the Golden Gate, with a huge railroad trestle off to the right.
“We’re fording the Firth of Forth now,” Memphis said.
Say that three times fast.
He laughed.
“Live here long enough and it becomes second nature.”
The thought brought her up short. Is that was she was doing? Testing the waters to see which parts of her were comfortable with Scotland, and all that it held, and which weren’t? Riding along in the car with Memphis by her side instead of Baldwin, and not minding?
The car was warm, and she was suddenly exhausted. Before she could delve too deeply into those thoughts, her eyes closed of their own volition, and she fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Memphis watched Taylor sleep. She was an angel in repose, cheeks rosily flushed, her mouth slightly open. He wanted to take his thumb and run it along the bottom of her lip, just where it was full to the point of spilling over. He had to sit on his hand to stop the urge. He wanted to wake her and watch those mismatched gray eyes focus fully on him, the pupils dilating in welcome. He wanted to crawl into her hair and pull it around him like a blanket. He wanted to shower her with roses, whisper words that would make her laugh. He wanted to feel her skin warm to his touch. The thought of taking her to his bed, flushed with desire, nearly drove him mad.
God, he wanted to rut with her until his balls ached.
He hadn’t felt so strongly about a woman since he met Evan, and being forced to compare the two, to seek out the sameness and the differences, almost made him ill. He was certainly not over Evan. Her death left a gaping hole inside him. The only thing that seemed to fill in the edges was thoughts of Taylor. Having her so near was intoxicating.
But to win her away from her chap was proving more difficult than he ever expected. He hoped that showing her how accommodating he could be, how much freedom she would have with him, no pressure, no fighting, would show her it wouldn’t be so bad being the wife of a viscount. He hoped that her outings with his friend Maddee would help Taylor find herself again.
He knew he shouldn’t be thinking this way. Taylor wasn’t his to take. If he could whip out a knife and cut her away from the uptight Fed, that would make life easier. Or he could just give up, find someone else. Maddee had been encouraging him to find another, more suitable woman for months, ever since he came back from his trip to the States heart-struck.
He’d gotten the feeling that Maddee would like for him to move on with her, but that would never happen. Not only was she married to one of his oldest friends, she wasn’t his type. Too dark-complected, too brash and forward. Too American. She’d made a move on him once at a party in Inverness, before Evan’s death. They’d been seated around a formal dining table and he’d felt a small, creeping hand slide up his leg and settle onto his cock. Maddee, resplendent in a low-cut emerald dress, kept up her conversation with the gentleman on her right while she fondled Memphis.
At first he was too surprised to stop her, and for a moment, he gave in to the pleasure of her illicit dexterity, but a quick glance across the table at his lovely bride had finished the matter. He’d delicately removed her hand and they’d never spoken of it.
That lapse didn’t diminish her abilities as a doctor, nor as a friend. Since then, she’d kept her physical distance, and their friendship continued unabated.
She’d been with him when he got the news about Evan.
Maddee and Roland had come up to London that day, were staying at his flat in Chelsea. The three of them went shopping, saw a show. Went to di
Oh, he had to stop this. Evan was gone. Gone forever. He wasn’t to blame. He knew that. Maddee had reassured him, over and over, that he wasn’t to blame. But he carried the guilt with him anyway. If he hadn’t left her alone…