Read Online Murder in the Smokies by Paula Graves - Free Book Online

naive.
    God, he’d missed her like crazy those first few lonely days away from Bitterwood and everything he’d ever known.
    Behind her house, the looming, dark contours of Smoky Ridge towered over the valley below like a silent, ancient sentry. As children, he and Ivy had both lived on that mountain. She, like he, had played among the firs and spruce, explored the natural caves and climbed the soaring ridges until they could see for miles and miles around them.
    When he’d left here years ago, he’d been certain nothing in these hills had the power to draw him back. Not even Ivy. Even a few days ago, when Jesse Cooper had assigned him to work with Stephen Billings on the investigation into his sister’s murder, Sutton hadn’t believed there was anything about Bitterwood that could speak to him anymore.
    But he’d been wrong. The land itself was a potent reminder that there had been beauty among the ruins of his childhood. Happiness that even misery hadn’t destroyed.
    And there had been Ivy Hawkins, who’d understood him without having to be told what he was feeling. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed having someone in his life he could trust that way.
    Ivy parked the Jeep in the driveway, leaving room for him to pull up parallel with her. She waited on the driveway for him to get out of the truck, greeting him with an oddly anxious smile.
    “This is it.” She looked at the house and back at him.
    “I like it,” he said truthfully.
    Her pleased look made his chest ache a little. “It’s not very big, but I have a spare room with a fold-out bed you can use. Are you hungry? I’m starving.” She started down the walkway to the house at a brisk clip, forcing him to move quickly to catch up at the door.
    Inside, the house was surprisingly cozy for a place belonging to an unmarried cop who lived alone. The front door opened into a small den decorated in warm shades of brown, green and amber. Despite the almost utilitarian lines of the furnishings, feminine touches surprised the eye here and there—a pair of lacy throw pillows in a deep shade of crimson tossed on each end of the brown leather sofa, a dreamy impressionist landscape hanging over the river-stone hearth, a pair of fuzzy yellow slippers lying at the foot of the overstuffed armchair near the window.
    He felt Ivy’s gaze on his face, as if she was waiting for his reaction. He looked at her and smiled just to see her smile back at him. “I like it inside, too. It feels like a home.”
    Her cheeks went pink as she bent to pick up a magazine that lay open on the coffee table. He caught a glimpse of a colorful garden on the front of the magazine before she deposited it into a wood rack by the sofa, where it joined a small pile of other magazines. “I’m not sure I spend enough time here for it to really feel like a home,” she admitted, unbuckling her shoulder holster as she crossed to a tall, four-drawer chest standing near an open archway that seemed to lead into a hall. She withdrew the Smith & Wesson from the holster, unlocked a drawer that contained a gun case and locked the pistol inside.
    “You don’t keep a gun nearby at all times?” Sutton’s own pistol felt like an appendage to him. He’d learned never to get caught without it. Fortunately, Tennessee honored his Alabama concealed carry license. He wouldn’t have wanted to come back to Bitterwood unarmed.
    The Calhouns had made too many enemies over the past few generations for him to walk around unprotected.
    “That’s my work-issued sidearm,” she answered with a little grin that made his gut clench with pure male hunger. She unlocked the second drawer down and pulled out another case. Inside lay a compact Glock 26. She checked the chamber and the magazine, then held it up to show Sutton. “This is my personal weapon.”
    She put the Glock in an unattached ankle holster. “You hungry?”
    “Yeah, but mostly I’m cold and wet,” he admitted. “I could use a shower and