“RJ, let’s get this cleaned up as best we can. The tub will have to stay down here until we can get the floor fixed,” Eric said.
“No problem.” RJ started giving out orders to the other guys, and I just stood there, clothes wet and splinters in my feet. Since I obviously wasn’t going to have any help from Andrew, I decided I might as well go back out and work on my car again.
After the disaster at my house the other day, I finally decided to suck it up and go see Andrew. It took a little prying to get Eric to tell me where his brother lived, but when I explained that I just wanted to bring him something from the bakery and apologize, he gave in.
Of course, I didn’t want to see him solely for that purpose. I needed friends in this town. I needed to establish myself as a good person that people wanted as a friend. Almost killing someone with a tub was a strike against me. Now that Bartholomew was pushing to have his father’s body exhumed due to suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, I had to be sure that I was seen in the best light possible. I couldn’t have people suspecting that I killed my own husband. I needed that trust, and nothing was going to stop me from getting it. Not even some guy from a small town that obviously thought I had purposely tried to injure him. He wasn’t on my shit list, and I intended to keep it that way.
I stopped by the bakery and picked up an array of baked goods for Andrew, and then decided to stop by the florist for some flowers to brighten his day. Sure, guys weren’t normally all about flowers, but I would try anything to get him on my side right now.
I stood outside the tattoo shop and stared up at the second floor. I was so nervous. I wasn’t sure why, but I wanted Andrew to like me, and not just because I needed it for my own purposes. I actually thought he was pretty handsome, though he tended to wear this beanie on his head, which I didn’t understand at all. At first, I thought it was because of the weather, but then I remembered that he wore it in the hardware store, and again at my house, and he never took it off. That was a little weird. He must be one of those hipsters, but that didn’t matter. He was nice, from what I saw.
“Can I help you?”
I flinched slightly, not expecting someone to walk up to me and start speaking. “Um…I’m just going to see a friend.”
The man quirked an eyebrow at me and crossed his arms over his chest. “Booty call?”
I frowned. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You know, for sex? Because if you’re looking for Andrew, he’s a little out of commission right now. A tub fell on him.”
My face flushed bright red and I nodded, clearing my throat. “I know. It was my tub.”
His eyes lit up and he started laughing. “No shit?”
“No shit,” I said, completely mortified.
“Oh, this is too great. Are you serious? You’re tub lady?”
“Um…I guess? I’ve never been referred to as tub lady before.”
“Oh, this is just too perfect.” His eyes trailed over my body in a way that made me a little uncomfortable, like he was sizing me up. “Sorry, it’s just…you’re very beautiful, and a tub fell on him,” he laughed.
“Yes, I know a tub fell on him. I was there.”
“I know, but you’re also beautiful.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure how my beauty has anything to do with it.”
“Well, a tub falls on him in front of a pretty girl…it’s kind of funny, you know?”
I stared at him in confusion. How was this funny? I didn’t get it.
“I’m Joe, by the way, his brother.”
“His…how many brothers does he have?”
“Six.”
My jaw dropped and I stared at him. “Six?”
He sighed slightly. “Yeah, and now there are all the women.” He snorted. “Six women.”
“Six women. Like…do you share them?”
He looked at me strangely. “How do you mean? For like, cleaning and stuff?”
“Um…no I meant…you know what? I don’t want to know.”
He looked confused for a second and then he burst out laughing. “No, as in six women to go with six different brothers. We were all waiting on Andrew to find someone.”
“Oh, I’m not someone.”
“Really? Because you’re here with baked goods and flowers.”
“To apologize.”
He nodded with a smirk on his face. “Sure. I won’t tell anyone.”
“It doesn’t matter because there’s nothing to tell.”
He gave me the okay sign and winked at me. “Sure. I get it. You want to keep it on the DL for now.” He leaned in closer and whispered. “If I were you, I wouldn’t try and keep it a secret for too long. The whole town always finds out about things like this.”
“Like what?” I asked frustratedly.
“You know,” he nodded, winking at me again. Did he have some sort of issue with his eye? Why the hell did he keep winking?
“I really don’t know. All I know is that a tub in my house almost killed him and I came to apologize.”
“And may I say that you dressed perfectly for the occasion.”
I looked down at my skinny jeans with knee boots and my coat, not sure what he was talking about. Did he think I was trying to be seductive? They were just normal clothes.
“Okay, I just want to go upstairs and apologize.”
He nodded again. “Of course. And may I make a few suggestions? I would make him be on the bottom, you know, because of his bum foot and all.”
“There is no bottom or top!”
“Right, because you want to do it standing. I gotcha.”
I took a deep breath and tried to calm my shit down, because right now I was feeling like there was another murder coming on. “Is it open already?”
He opened the door for me and swept his hand in a wide bow for me. I passed, stomping up the stairs, only to hear him shout, “Head is always a good apology.”
I paused momentarily, ready to turn around and yell at him, but he was already gone. I shook my head and kept climbing. Why the hell would he think I came here with flowers and baked goods only to seduce him? What kind of person seduced someone like that? If I had shown up in a short dress and high heels, I could see how he might get that idea.
Stopping outside the door, I took a calming breath before knocking. I heard something crash inside, then a ton of swearing before the door finally swung open. Andrew stared at me in shock, looking past me like he was expecting someone else to be there.
“Uh…what are you doing here?”
“I came to apologize. I brought pastries and some flowers.”
He looked at the flowers and then back at me. “I need a minute.” Then he slammed the door in my face.
Andrew
I slammed the door in her face and looked at all the papers scattered around the living room. I had a fucking whodunnit board on my wall, and it all pointed to her. I couldn’t let her in and see all this shit. Then I was for sure going to end up dead. I hobbled over to the cork board and yanked it off the wall, then tossed it in my room and went back for the paperwork. It was fucking everywhere, and I vowed that after she was gone, I was going to do a better job at organizing all this shit. I slammed the lid on my laptop and carried all the stuff into my bedroom and shut the door.
I was panting from hobbling everywhere by the time I got back to the door. I swung it open and tried to appear as normal as possible. She didn’t look like she was here to kill me, but then again, I didn’t think she was trying to kill me the other day. Yet, I had a wrench thrown at my head and was almost killed by a tub.
Lorelei: 2
Andrew: 0
If I didn’t learn how to play her game, I was going to end up dead for sure. I thought about calling Derek and asking for protection, but he would probably laugh in my face. I even considered talking to Eric about it, but he worked for her, and I didn’t want him to lose this job if my suspicions were all wrong.
“Are you going to let me in?�
�� she asked coyly.
“Uh, right. Sorry about that. You caught me at a bad time.”
“Oh, did you want me to leave?”
“No, it’s fine. I just had to put some work away.”
“Oh, what do you do?”
Shit, I had to bring up work, and if I could do it from home, that was even harder to lie about. “Um…I’m a computer programmer.”
“Oh, that’s sounds kind of boring.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, you know, boring, but brings in good money.”
She nodded and looked around the place. “Do you have a vase where I can put these?”
I glanced at the flowers again and a shiver ran down my spine. Was she trying to tell me something? She brought me lilies, the funeral flower. Yeah, this was definitely a message. She was going to have me killed. That had to be it, either that or a warning, like mind your own business and you won’t need these.
I swallowed hard and pulled a large plastic cup from the cabinet, one of those giant ones you get at sporting events. That was the closest thing I had to a vase. She laughed slightly and took the cup from me.
“Why don’t you go sit down and put your foot up. I’ll take care of these.” Space, that was a good thing. I turned, but she stopped me. “Oh, and I brought you pastries. Mary Anne said these are your favorite. She also said something about next time the tub should happen at the bakery? Do you know what that means?”
I looked down at the box she was holding out to me and slowly took it from her. “Um…everything happens at Mary Anne’s bakery. She says that my brothers and I should go there more often because we always bring in business.”
She tilted her head, like she wanted more information, but I couldn’t give it. I was too busy staring at the box, wondering what she had done to the pastries on the way over. Had she poisoned them? I would need to look up what poisons were undetectable during an autopsy.
I hobbled over to the couch and sat down, opening the box of pastries. I couldn’t just eat one. That would be stupid. If she poisoned them, I wouldn’t stand a chance. I glanced up, watching her move around my kitchen looking for something. Then she pulled out a long knife and turned to me, the steel glinting brightly at me. I swallowed hard, watching her every move with the knife.
“Aren’t you going to eat them?”
I nodded and pulled out a pastry, watching as she took the wrapping off the flowers and then started slicing into the stems of the lilies like she was cutting meat. Smooth and precise, her movements were obviously very practiced. I tore a piece off my scone and tossed it in the corner of the room, then started moving my mouth like I was chewing.
“How are they?”
“You know, I think Mary Anne changed her recipe. Can you come try this?”
She smirked and walked over, knife still in hand as she bent over and opened her mouth. Her tongue darted out, running along her bottom lip as she waited for me to feed her. I held it out to her and watched as she took a bite. But I couldn’t watch just her mouth when the knife was so damn close to me.
She moaned and stood up, flipping the knife around in her hand, as if she wasn’t wielding a deadly object. “That’s sinful.”
She sauntered back into the kitchen and returned to cutting the flowers. Deciding that if she could eat it, so could I, I shoved a large bite in my mouth and chewed. But then I started wondering if maybe she had poisoned it with something she was already immune to, like maybe she had the vaccination for it or something.
I choked on the pastry, coughing so hard that I couldn’t stop. Lorelei quickly brought me a glass of water, and before I could think better, I swallowed down the whole glass. I started panicking, sure that at any moment I was going to have a heart attack and die.
“Are you okay?” she asked worriedly.
I nodded, though I was anything but okay. I was freaking the fuck out. I couldn’t take the pressure, constantly wondering if she was trying to kill me. But I needed this time with her. I had to figure her out, so I forced myself to take a deep breath and get my shit under control. I was a professional. Well, I wanted to be.
“So, how’s your foot?”
She took a seat beside me, lifting my foot up off the ground like she had every right to. I stared at the boot around my foot, remembering when the tub fell on me. I thought it had crushed my ankle.
“It’s alright. The doctor said it was bruised pretty good. I have to wear this boot for a week, just to take the pressure off.”
“And you’re icing it?”
“Uh—“
She stood before I had a chance to answer, and grabbed a bag of frozen vegetables out of the freezer. Coming back to me, she opened the boot and rested my foot on her leg, placing the bag of peas on top. She was being so caring. This didn’t ring true with being a serial killer. Who took care of their victim before slaughtering them? Or maybe that was how she lured her victims in…
“It’s really bruised. I’m so sorry that happened.”
Was she really? I wasn’t so sure about that. She was the one that had told me to wait right where I was, and then a tub fell on me.
“It was an accident,” I said with a smile. “Old houses are unpredictable.”
“Yeah, but I think I remember Eric saying during the walk-through that the floor was rotting in the bathroom.”
Ah, so she did know. And she was admitting to it so that she couldn’t be accused of hiding the truth later.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” I said nonchalantly.
She smiled up at me. “So, you forgive me?”
“Of course,” I laughed. “It’s not like you were hoping I would get crushed by the tub, right?”
She smiled brightly and shook her head. “Not yet. I don’t know you well enough to know if you deserve such a death.”
A shudder ran through me, but luckily, she took it as the chill from the frozen vegetables. “Well, I don’t want to bother you. I just wanted to check and make sure you were okay.”
“Do you still want help at the house?”
She cringed. “You’re willing to risk your life again for paint samples?”
I shrugged like it was no big deal. “You don’t have any other tubs upstairs, do you?”
“Not unless there’s one in the attic.”
“Fingers crossed,” I joked.
“Alright, then come on out when you’re feeling up to it.”
“Will do.”
She grabbed the pill bottle off the counter and brought it over to me. “Don’t forget to take your pain pills.”
I nodded, taking them from her, but once she was out the door I flushed them down the sink. There was no fucking way I was taking pills that she handed me.
I dug through her financials, blown away by the amount she had in checking and savings. She was rich, but what really got me was the trust. Going over the papers that Barty got me, I could see his concern with her receiving the trust. Literally everything in there went to her after her husband’s death. Companies worth millions would be signed over to her with full control. Stocks and shares in companies that were doing really well, stood to make her even richer. Not to mention there were houses scattered around the country and overseas that could make her a tiny profit. And when I said tiny, I meant she would be the richest person I’d ever heard of.
Tossing the papers down, I sighed and rubbed at my eyes. I felt like I was going cross-eyed from the paperwork. She didn’t necessarily seem like she was after the money, but then again, she was updating that house, using all the money she had to make it exactly as she wanted, like she had money in reserves. She was counting on that other money to keep her going after her savings was depleted.
I had to see her again, talk to her and get a good feel for who she was. When I saw her a week ago, that hadn’t really told me a lot, besides the two murder attempts. My foot was still in the boot, so I would have to hobble around, but I couldn’t delay. I had already received daily emails from Barty asking for a followup on how the investiga
tion was going. As of right now, I had nothing concrete to go on.
Putting away all my paperwork, I headed for the door. I hated taking the fucking stairs and had avoided it as much as possible. Pulling on my beanie before I headed outside, I zipped up my coat and hunched against the cold wind. Winter was just around the corner and based on the weather forecast, this year was going to be especially cold and snowy.
Luckily, my injured foot was not the foot I drove with, so I got in my truck and drove out to her house. It was always a relief to see that other people were at the house. It made me feel safer, like I wasn’t risking life and limb to come here. I walked up the steps to her house, avoiding the really bad boards, and knocked on her front door. I was still nervous as hell, but the minute she opened the door, I was practically knocked on my ass by her beauty. This was how she got men. She had this everyday woman look to her. It drew men in and then she sucked the life out of them. The one thing I didn’t understand was why she didn’t go for Barty. He was a good looking guy. He was younger, so at least she would have a good life with him. But then I had to remind myself that the endgame involved her getting everything, and Barty had already told me that he wouldn’t have received everything she had.
“Hey,” she said brightly. “You’re back. I thought I might never see you again.”
“Here I am,” I said jauntily, wanting to smack myself for sounding like an idiot.
“Well, come in. You must be freezing. The temperature’s dropping like crazy.”
I rubbed my hands together as I stepped inside. “Isn’t the furnace working?”
“It’s temperamental. Eric ordered another one, and it’s supposed to be put in soon. But come look at this,” she said excitedly, dragging me into the living room.
I glanced up, sure that I was going to see a tub fall from the ceiling again. Instead, the ceiling was completely repaired, aside from the final paint job. And the tub was no longer in the living room, so they must have prioritized getting that fixed.
She stopped and stared up at me happily. “Okay, what am I looking at?”
Tangled Web: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 6) Page 7