Free Truth & Lies: A Queen City Justice Novel by Elizabeth Bemis Page A

feeling that Deck didn’t often let anyone touch him. She couldn’t believe she’d been so bold as to nestle his head in her lap and touch him to her heart’s content.
    Except she wasn’t feeling particularly content. She wanted… more.
    A lot more.
    She wanted to see if his skin tasted as good as it smelled, and if his reciprocating touch would be gentle or urgent. She wanted to feel his lips on hers, his arms tight around her body, and his strong hands stroking her long-ignored skin.
    For less than a second, she contemplated taking him down again and comforting him for her own gain. Of stretching out next to him and pressing the full length of her body against his and seeing if he would take things from there.
    It was wrong, and she never would have done it.
    But it was a thought that wouldn’t leave her alone.
    “I help you,” she insisted. As much fun as it was to think about getting him on the floor again, she didn’t want to hurt him further, and she certainly didn’t have anything else to do. As accustomed as she was to going at top speed nineteen hours a day, two days of virtual inactivity were already driving her to inappropriate fantasies about her host and possible suspect.
    He hesitated for a long moment. “I don’t really have much of a choice, unless I want to find myself in your lap again.”
    He looked up at her, and Dana tried to school her features into a questioning, “Huh?” all while her heart was doing the Macarena in her chest.
    Deck leaned down and lifted the edge of the white-painted trim, tilting it into place against the wall. “Hold this,” he said, indicating where she should put her hands.
    “Tell me about yourself,” he said out of the blue.
    “What do you want to know?”
    “Do you have a family?” he asked.
    “Family?”
    “Brothers and sisters, mother, father? Family.”
    She shook her head. No siblings. Her father’s actions had taken her mother from her, and a prison fight had taken him. Her grandparents, who’d raised her after her mother’s death had passed almost five years ago.
    “No.” She gazed at his profile while he prepared to drive the first nail, several others sticking out the side of his mouth, caught between his lips.
    “You have…family?” she asked slowly.
    He shrugged. “Sort of.”
    She thought that was the end of that. Then he started talking.
    “My father died when I was in Iraq about five years ago. I have a brother who’s younger. My mom’s still alive, but we don’t speak.”
    “Why not?”
    “She lied to us all about something big.”
    Dana gave him a blank smile while he hammered the trim into place, holding her breath and hoping he would continue.
    “I haven’t talked to her since then. I hate it when people lie to me. Any lie.”
    Dana felt the weight of the lies she’d already told him. Both explicitly and by omission. He was going to hate her when the truth came out. If he hadn’t spoken to his mother in five years, how quickly would he thrust her from his life?
    Not that she was expecting their relationship to last past the point when Sherwood pulled her out of here.
    The loss that thought brought was far more intense than she ever would have imagined.
    “Have you ever been in love?” he asked.
    “I think so at the time.” She shrugged. “Now? Maybe no.”
    “I almost got married a few years ago. I was in the military and not home as much as she liked. She’d send these great emails and letters to me in the field. I thought everything was working out well. Then I found out she’d been seeing our neighbor the entire time I was gone.” He made a derisive snort. “I confronted her about it. Of course, she lied. But I’d seen the truth with my own eyes. And the neighborhood busybody was only too happy to fill me in on the details I hadn’t seen.”
    She wondered why he was telling her all this. Was this really a get-to-know-you conversation, or was he trying to put her at ease so she’d spill the beans? While