The Overnight Alibi Read online

  “It’s still hard to tell if you’re the right woman. The one I’m looking for had a beadful of hot red hair, a make-you-hard smile and a voice... ”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Marilyn Pappano

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright

  “It’s still hard to tell if you’re the right woman. The one I’m looking for had a beadful of hot red hair, a make-you-hard smile and a voice... ”

  Mick made a sound that was halfway between regret and arousal, then walked in a slow circle around her. Grasping her hips, he yanked her hard against his body. Her hands went to his chest to stop herself from falling.

  “You’re about the right height...the right age...your breasts and hips are right.... But there’s only one way to be sure....”

  He pushed her back on the bed and followed her down. “Oh, yeah. I remember this. You’re the one,” he murmured. For a moment he closed his eyes, and a familiar look—arousal, hunger, almost-there satisfaction—came across his face. Then he looked at her, and instead of arousal, there was contempt. “Oh, yeah, you’re the one. And you’re going to help clear my name.”

  Dear Reader,

  Everyone loves Linda Turner, and it’s easy to see why, when she writes books like this month’s lead title. The Proposal is the latest in her fabulous miniseries, THE LONE STAR SOCIAL CLUB. Things take a turn for the sexy when a straitlaced lady judge finds herself on the receiving end of an irresistible lawyer’s charms as he tries to argue her into his bed. The verdict? Guilty—of love in the first degree.

  We’ve got another miniseries, too: Carla Cassidy’s duet called SISTERS. You’ll enjoy Reluctant Wife, and you’ll be eagerly awaiting its sequel, Reluctant Dad coming next month. Reader favorite Marilyn Pappano is back with The Overnight Alibi, a suspenseful tale of a man framed for murder. Only one person can save him: the flame-haired beauty who spent the night in question in his bed. But where is she? And once he finds her, what is she hiding? Brittany Young joins us after writing twenty-six books for Silhouette Romance and Special Edition. The Ice Man, her debut for the line, will leave you eager for her next appearance. Nancy Gideon is back with Let Me Call You Sweetheart, a tale of small-town scandals and hot-running passion. And finally, welcome first-time author Monica McLean. Cinderella Bride is a fabulous marriage-of-convenience story, a wonderful showcase for this fine new author’s talents.

  And after you read all six books, be sure to come back next month, because it’s celebration time! Intimate Moments will bring you three months’ worth of extra-special books with an extra-special look in honor of our fifteenth anniversary. Don’t miss the excitement.

  Leslie J. Wainger Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  * * *

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY.14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  * * *

  Marilyn Pappano

  THE OVERNIGHT ALIBI

  Books by Marilyn Pappano

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Within Reach #182

  The lights of Rome #214

  Guilt by Association #233

  Cody Daniels’ Return #258

  Room at the Inn #268

  Something of Heaven #294

  Somebody’s Baby #310

  Not Without Honor #338

  Safe Haven #363

  A Dangerous Man #381

  Probable Cause #405

  Operation Homefront #424

  Somebody’s lady #437

  No Retreat #469

  Memories of Laura #486

  Sweet Annie’s Pass #512

  Finally a Father #542

  *Michael’s Gift #583

  *Regarding Remy #609

  *A Man Like Smith #626

  Survive the Night #703

  Discovered. Daddy #746

  *Convincing Jamey #812

  *The Taming of Reid Donovan #824

  *Knight Errant #836

  The Overnight Alibi #848

  *Southern Knights

  Silhouette Books

  Silhouette Christmas Stories 1989

  “The Greatest Gift”

  Silhouette Summer Sizzlers 1991

  “Loving Abby”

  MARILYN PAPPANO

  After following her career navy husband around the country for sixteen years, Marilyn Pappano now makes her home high on a hill overlooking her hometown. With acreage, an orchard and the best view in the state, she’s not planning on pulling out the moving boxes ever again. When not writing, she makes apple butter from their own apples (when the thieves don’t get to them first), putts around the pond in the boat and tends a yard that she thinks would look better as a wildflower field, if the darn things would just grow there.

  You can write to Marilyn via snail mail at P.O. Box 643, Sapulpa, OK 74067-0643.

  Chapter 1

  The interrogation room at the Yates County Sheriff’s Department was shabby, like the rest of the building, and offered little in the way of comfort. The table was crooked, the wood scarred and marked with water rings. The chairs were straight-backed and uncushioned, and made a body ache in little time.

  Mick Reilly had spent two hours in this straight-backed uncushioned chair today—as uncomfortable, numbing and frustrating as the hour he’d spent here yesterday. He’d answered the same questions, first for one deputy, then for another, finally for the sheriff himself. He’d given the same answers so many times that he was saying them by rote. As if he’d planned ahead, the sheriff had mused out loud. As if he’d memorized his story.

  Not a story. The truth. Every word he’d said was God’s honest truth.

  He hadn’t been anywhere near the resort Saturday night.

  Yes, he’d had an argument with Sandra Saturday afternoon.

  Yes, he’d threatened to get rid of her.

  No, he hadn’t made good on his threat.

  No, he couldn’t explain why no one remembered seeing him in the bar that night.

  No, he sure as hell couldn’t explain how the pretty, sexy redhead he’d left with had missed their notice.

  No, he did not kill his wife.

  He did not kill his wife.

  Not surprisingly the deputies didn’t seem to believe him.

  Wearily he dragged his fingers through his hair. “Look, Sheriff, why don’t you send your people out to find Elizabeth? She can verify where I was, and you can start looking for Sandra’s killer, instead of wasting time with me.”

  “Elizabeth. Pretty redhead on the prowl. Pretty enough to tempt a married man into forgetting he’s married.” The sheriff looked at the deputy on his left. “Sound like anyone you know, Billy?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What about you, Keith?”

  The deputy on his right shook his head.

  The sheriff looked at Mick again. “Billy and Keith are my only unmarried deputies. They know every single woman in the county. If they don’t know this Elizabeth of yours, then she’s not from around here.”

  Mick’s fingers folded slowly into a fist. “I never said she was single. In fact, I thought...”

  “You thought what, Mr. Reilly?”

  He’d thought she was exactly what he’d needed to end eleven years of a lousy marriage and eighteen months of sleeping alone. She was beautiful, hot, wild, her
blue eyes full of promise, her husky voice wicked and tempting. He’d thought he had nothing to lose by succumbing to temptation just once in his sorry life. He’d thought he deserved a night of pleasure after so many hundreds of nights without. “I thought she was probably married and looking for a little fun while her husband was otherwise occupied.”

  “What made you think that? Maybe because you were married and looking for a little fun while your wife was otherwise occupied? Does a married man who fools around learn to recognize married women who fool around?”

  Mick made an effort not to grind his teeth. “I didn’t ‘fool around.’ This was the first time. The only time.”

  “Uh-huh.” Two short syllables filled with disbelief. “So what made you think this Elizabeth of yours was married?”

  “She didn’t give a last name. She didn’t want to know my name. She didn’t want to talk about herself at all.” All she’d wanted was a couple of drinks and sex. The alcohol had been necessary for courage, leading him to believe that she didn’t make a habit of picking up strange men. The way she’d hesitated at her motel room had made him wonder if she’d caught her husband in an affair and he was her way of getting back at him. Then she’d kissed him—an oddly sweet, hungry, desperate sort of kiss—and he hadn’t cared why she was there. He’d just been glad she was.

  “Why didn’t you take her to your room? Seems a lot more convenient, it being right across the parking lot.”

  “She wanted to go to hers.”

  “Which was where?”

  Mick forced his fingers to relax, forced himself to breathe deeply and answer the question for the third or fourth or tenth time. “I don’t know. Some motel down the road from mine. Maybe...I don’t know, ten miles. Maybe fifteen.”

  “Did you drive?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did she ride with you or take her own car?”

  “She went with me.” She’d sat in the middle of the seat, pressed right up against him, her breasts rubbing his arm, her fingers rubbing his...

  His face flushing, he cut off that line of recall. She’d given him directions between seductive kisses, had pointed out the dingy place on the side of the road between caresses, had unpeeled herself from his body long enough to take him inside room 17, where she had suddenly turned shy. Elizabeth bold and brash had turned him on. Elizabeth sweet and shy had damn near finished him off. He’d found the combination of sweet, shy and sexual incredibly erotic.

  “So you drove to this motel, but you don’t know the name of it. You can’t tell us how to get there.”

  “You start at my motel and you drive down the highway until you reach it. There aren’t that many motels in the area.”

  “And as of Saturday night, we have one less.”

  Mick sighed heavily. About the time Sandra had been dying on the floor at the Eagle’s Haven Resort, he had been sliding inside Elizabeth for the third time. About the time the flames had engulfed Blue Water Construction’s fifteen-million-dollar mistake, he had been experiencing the third best climax in his life. He would surely have to pay for that in the hereafter.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. Reilly, for an innocent man, you don’t seem particularly sorry about your wife’s death.”

  Mick locked gazes with him. “I am sorry, sorrier than you can imagine.”

  “But?”

  He felt guilty for what he was about to say. “We haven’t lived together for more than a year. We were in the middle of a divorce that was no more amicable than the marriage. I’m sorry she’s dead. I’m sorry for the way she died. But if you expect a show of grief, I can’t give it to you.” There would surely be special punishment in the hereafter for that, too.

  “You know, whenever there’s a murder, the first thing we ask ourselves is who would benefit. You were in the middle of an ugly divorce. Your wife wanted every last dollar you have. She was threatening your lifestyle, your reputation, even the future of your company. So when I ask myself who would benefit from Sandra Reilly’s death, the first person who comes to mind is you.”

  “But I didn’t kill her.” Mick spoke each word carefully, quietly, tired of saying them, frustrated because they were true and no one believed them.

  “Uh-huh.” The sheriff leaned back in his chair, hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and studied Mick. “I’m going to have Billy here type up your statement, and after you sign it, you’ll be free to go—for the time being. Before I send him out, is there anything you want to change?”

  “Everything I’ve told you is the truth.”

  “You know, once you sign what he types, if you change your story later, you could be facing further charges.”

  Mick stubbornly held his gaze and didn’t say a word.

  With a nod from the sheriff, the two deputies left the room. Their boss followed, closing the door behind him.

  Further charges, the sheriff had said. He’d already decided that Mick was guilty. In his mind he’d already charged him with Sandra’s murder and was ready to charge him again for lying. Hell, when you were facing murder charges in a state with capital punishment, what worry could making a false statement to police hold?

  Mick dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes. He was sorry Sandra was dead, sorrier than he would have believed, but not sorry enough. He had lived with her, made love with her, planned a future and a family with her. He had loved her the best he was able, and he should feel great grief and sorrow.

  But all he felt was regret. Anger that he had managed to be implicated in her death. Fear that, in death, she might have achieved what she’d longed for in life: his destruction. If the sheriff didn’t soon turn his attention in some other direction, whoever had killed her was going to get away with it and leave Mick to pay for his crime.

  So if the sheriff wasn’t interested in looking elsewhere, Mick would. As soon as he got out of here, he would find Elizabeth himself, somehow, some way, and he would convince her that his freedom—maybe even his life—was more important than her husband finding out where she’d spent Saturday night.

  Right. What woman was going to put her marriage on the line for the sake of a stranger? An intimate stranger, granted, but still a stranger.

  Rising from the chair, he paced to the end of the room, where a window with rusted bars looked out on a parking lot with sheriffs cars and his own pickup. It was a dry, dusty day without a cloud in the sky, and it made him itch to be out on the lake someplace with a fishing pole and a handful of lures. Hell, he itched to be anywhere besides here, doing anything besides declaring himself innocent of murder.

  How had things gone so wrong? People made bad marriages all the time, but they didn’t become the prime suspect in a murder case because of them. Companies made bad decisions on a regular basis, but they didn’t come under investigation for arson for them. And married men picked up beautiful women in bars all the time with no worries beyond getting caught and safe sex. How did it all go so wrong for him?

  Turning his back on the scene outside, he stretched tight muscles, then leaned against the wall. If he had any luck left in the world, the sheriff would come back in and say, “Sorry for the inconvenience, but your wife’s killer just confessed. You’re free to go.” Mick would even settle for something along the lines of “Thanks for the cooperation. We’ll let you know when we’ve made an arrest.”

  But when the door opened, it wasn’t the sheriff but his deputies. Billy handed him a statement and a pen, told him uninterestedly to read the statement carefully before signing it, then cracked his knuckles while he waited.

  Mick scrawled his signature on the last page, tossed the pen on the table and straightened. “Can I go now?”

  “Sure. We don’t have enough evidence to hold you. But the sheriff said to suggest that you not leave the county.”

  He was halfway around the table when the deputy spoke again. “He also said to tell you that you might want to get yourself a lawyer.”

  Mick stared at him, his mouth
going dry, his muscles tensing again. They had advised him of his rights yesterday before they’d started questioning him, and he had passed on the opportunity to call a lawyer. He hadn’t done anything wrong—other than breaking his vows in a marriage about to end—and he’d seen no need to bring in an attorney. Besides, the only ones he knew personally were the company’s lawyer—great with contracts, never handled a criminal case in his life—and his divorce lawyer. He had little enough faith in the man’s competence regarding divorce law. He certainly wouldn’t put his life in his hands in a murder case.

  Before he started looking for sweet Elizabeth, maybe he should find a lawyer first. It shouldn’t be too difficult. The phone books were full of them.

  He acknowledged the deputies with a grim nod as he walked out. When he reached the sidewalk out front, an inordinate sense of relief swept over him, as if he’d been lucky to escape the building a free man.

  The next time the sheriff requested his presence, he might not walk out again.

  He climbed into his truck, slammed the door and sat motionless, ignoring the heat. For one long helpless moment, he didn’t know what to do or where to go. Back to the motel where he’d lived during the construction of Eagle’s Haven? Out to the resort where his office was located, where his wife had died? Looking for the motel where his alibi had taken him?

  Part of him wanted to go home, back to Oklahoma City. But when he’d just been told not to leave the county, traveling 130 miles away didn’t seem the wisest move.

  He headed for his own motel four blocks down the street. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was a world better than the place Elizabeth had taken him to Saturday night. Even with a buzz from the booze and in a state of incredible arousal, he’d still noticed that the gravel parking lot was deeply rutted, the building was in need of paint, the ceiling in room 17 was water-stained, and the faucet dripped loudly enough to echo in his sleep. He’d noticed that, other than two cars at the opposite end, his was the only vehicle in the lot, and room 17 was the only room showing lights.