Free Landry's Law by Kelsey Roberts Page B

go for a drive.
    “Where?” she asked warily.
    “I need to go to my place and pack a bag.”
    “You don’t have to sleep here,” she said.
    “Yes, I do,” he countered. “I’ll pack a bag, and make us something to eat, then we’ll come back for the night.”
    “Handsome and he cooks,” Savannah teased. “If you also do all the cleaning and the laundry, you’re the man my mother told me to marry.”
    Seth cleared his throat nervously. “I don’t think I’m marriage material.”
    Savannah gave him a gentle nudge as they walked out the door. “I was making a joke, Seth, not a proposal.”
    She climbed up into the Bronco. When Seth got behind the wheel, she said, “You know, the last time I was in this truck, you took me to jail and ordered my complete humiliation.”
    Seth felt the words jab him like a knife. “I was just doing my job.”
    “I know,” she agreed easily.
    More easily than he would have if their positions had been reversed.
    “If you didn’t think I was guilty, why put me through that?” she asked softly.
    “I’m sorry, Savannah. But I can’t write a report saying I failed to follow procedure because I personally don’t think the suspect is guilty.”
    “Okay,” she relented quickly.
    When he drove past the Mountainview Inn, henoticed Savannah suffer a nervous jolt. Not knowing what to do, he simply placed his hand on her denim-clad knee. Almost instantly, Savannah laced her fingers through his. Seth wasn’t sure how to handle this. Part of him knew that he should be hands-off, yet that other part of him begged for this to be the beginning of something. But what? Could he stand being with a woman who could be killed or could disappear as abruptly as his mother? Was it worth it? And what guarantee did he have that once she testified, she wouldn’t go running back to Connecticut? Another possible form of abandonment. Could he stand it? He glanced over at Savannah’s exquisite face and the answer came to him in a flash. Yes.
    Seth showed her inside his home. It was a western-style brick two-story. For some reason, it mattered to him what she thought of it. He didn’t have to wait long.
    “Who knew you could decorate in roadkill and hide?” she asked with false sweetness.
    “I used to hunt back in the days when it was politically correct,” Seth explained a little defensively.
    Savannah pointed to the mounted animals and said, “In honor of giving up that barbaric sport, have you considered taking down the glass-eyed heads that follow you everywhere?”
    “I don’t recall me making fun of your fake birdcage.”
    She seemed stunned that he had noticed thedetail. “The important word there is fake. I have all fake furs, nothing had to die for me to decorate.”
    “Well, maybe I’ll get around to it. Come on upstairs. The second floor is a dead-thing-free zone.”
    “Okay.”
    Hearing her soft chuckle was a salve for his unusually frazzled nerves. He hadn’t felt this self-conscious since the tenth grade when he’d lured Melanie Yount beneath the bleachers at a high school football game. What was it about this woman that had him forever off-kilter?
    He had the oddest conflicting emotions when Savannah entered his bedroom. She was the first woman ever to be in the room not for the specific purpose of seduction. It was strange. It got worse when she made herself right at home by climbing up on his high iron-and-post bed and tested the mattress. Her wriggling body in the center of his bed raised his blood pressure, among other things. Her green sweater had ridden up so that he could see the outline of her rib cage as well as a glint when her belly button ring caught the light.
    “This is comfortable,” she sighed, testing his mattress.
    Not for me. Seth began throwing clothing into a bag. He was so flustered that he had to stop, dump everything out and start again.
    “Need help?” Savannah called from his bed.
    “No.”
    She rolled over, slid to the end of the bed and