by Ruthie Knox
“Have fun,” Ellen said. “We should be done in half an hour or so.”
A few minutes later, Jamie had gathered up the troops and hobbled out of the shop, headed for the Friendly’s down the road to provide ice cream in the dead of winter to a boy too young to care that it wasn’t seasonally appropriate and a baby too young to eat it.
The older seamstress craned her head to watch him disappear through the shop window. When she brought her attention back to the dress, the other women were all staring.
“What?” she asked around a mouth full of pins. “Your man has an ass on him.”
“I know,” Carly said smugly. “I taught him to cook, too.”
That made even Katie smile. Only the teenage seamstress remained unmoved, obviously mortified by her mother’s bawdy humor.
Katie’s phone chirped, and she leaned down to scoop it off the floor, clutching the strapless bodice of the dress to her chest to keep it from taking a dive.
It was a text from Judah. R u there? Need 2 talk 2 u. The relief that flooded through her told her how worried she’d been that he’d never call her again. That he was dead somewhere, felled by the candlestick in the conservatory or the rope in the green room, and she’d have to feel guilty about it for the rest of her life.
She texted back quickly, Where r u?
“Is that him?” Ellen asked.
Carly chimed in. “Who’s ‘him’? Nobody ever tells me anything.”
“Sean Owens,” Ellen told her. “He works for Caleb.”
“The blond one?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“He’s yummy!” Carly said, fanning herself dramatically. “Nicely done, Katie. Is he any good in bed?”
“None of your business.”
“She’s turning pink,” Ellen observed.
“I am not.”
“She is,” Ellen said to Carly. “With their dark complexion, you have to know where to look, but Caleb blushes just the same. Tips of his ears and the base of his throat. You embarrassed her.”
“The question is, did I embarrass her because he’s terrible in bed or because he’s superb?”
“Stand up straight,” the shop owner said to Carly. “I’m going to zip you.”
“I apologize in advance for my boobs. Dora’s on a nursing strike, and they are ginormous. Also, they hurt like a bitch, so don’t poke me, please. I do this reflexive slapping thing when I get poked in the boob. It isn’t pretty.”
“Oh, I know,” the owner said. She pointed to her daughter. “When I was breast-feeding her, my tits were like warheads. Every time my husband tried to touch them, I was like, ‘Don’t go there, honey, not unless you want to find out what a nuclear holocaust feels like.’ ”
“Mom!” the girl said, aghast, and Carly laughed until she had to wipe the tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand.
“So are you going to be in here next?” the owner asked Katie. “I don’t see a ring on your finger yet. Is this guy The One?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be tight-lipped and efficient, like a tailor in the movies?” Katie asked.
“You must be thinking of the other bridal shop,” she said. “Though I’ll tell you what, for all her airs? That woman’s a real whore.”
Carly snorted, and Ellen said, “I knew I liked you. ’Fess up, Katie. Is Sean The One? Caleb says he’s a great guy.”
“He didn’t say that,” Katie replied. She knew her brother. He’d never be so effusive.
“Okay, so I believe his actual words were, ‘If he weren’t sleeping with my sister, I might like him.’ ”
“But from Caleb, that’s high praise,” Carly said, sounding impressed.
Katie’s phone chirped in her hand. Judah again. Nowhere. Call me when U can. I have gay-man probs 2 discuss.
Katie smiled, relieved he was safe—and pleased that he was using his phone. Sean should be able to track him now.
“Is it him again? He’s sending you adorable texts, isn’t he?” Carly asked.
“No. It’s Judah.”
“Judah Pratt?”
“You know Judah Pratt?” the shop owner asked.
“Yeah,” Katie admitted. “He’s a friend.”
“You ladies want to go out for a drink sometime? Maybe you can introduce me to George Clooney.”
That cracked them up all over again, but Katie didn’t join in the mirth. She glanced at Ellen, not liking the determined set to her mouth. The inquisition was just getting started.
Best to cut off Ellen’s question-and-answer session before it got rolling. Her future sister-in-law browbeat record company executives for a living, and she had a killer reputation in the music industry as an advocate for artists in contract negotiations. In full lawyer mode, she was a force to behold.
“Let’s not get too excited, okay?” she said. “It’s just a casual thing.”
“According to who?” Ellen asked.
“According to me.”
“Is it casual for him, too? Because—”
“I know where you’re going with this.” Ellen had considered her relationship with Caleb casual, too, but Caleb had disagreed, and it hadn’t taken him long to bring Ellen around to his way of thinking. “It’s not the same situation at all. Sean isn’t sticking around. He’s going back to California, and that’ll be that.”
“When?” Ellen asked.
Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? Not tomorrow. Probably not next week. But sometime, after they wrapped up the case? Definitely.
At least, that was the plan. It seemed as though very little about Sean’s return to Camelot had gone the way he’d planned it.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s in California?” Carly asked.
“He has a company there.”
“So what’s he doing in Camelot?”
“His mom died. He came back to take care of the estate stuff.”
“Oh, that’s sad,” mumbled the shop owner around her pins. “Who was his mom?”
“Jenny Owens. She taught English at the high school.”
“Sure, I knew her,” she said. “Turn around, honey.” Katie did a slow three-sixty, and the woman pulled the pins from her mouth and pinned the tuck her daughter had made in a few more places. “Great teacher. Strange lady, though. This is her boy she was always talking about? Some kind of genius computer guy?”
Katie nodded.
“But she died back in the summer, didn’t she? Why’s he still around?”
Because as soon as he walked into his mother’s house, his feet got stuck, and he doesn’t know how to leave.
Because if he doesn’t figure out how to deal with his guilt, he’ll never be able to move on with his life.
Because he’s a complete mess, but he’s a man, and therefore stubborn and terrible at feelings, and he has no idea.
Katie didn’t think any of those answers were going to work.
“What’s he doing working for Caleb?” Carly asked.
“They met at the pub one night, and Caleb offered him a job. I think Sean only took it because he’s one of those people who can’t stand to be idle. He was here, so he figured he might as well be doing something.”
“Want to hear my theory?” Ellen asked.
“No.”
“I think he’s sticking around because of you.”
Katie shook her head, denying the possibility even as it made her heart race. “We’ve only been together for a couple of weeks.”
“Caleb told me ages ago that Sean had a thing for you. Months and months ago.”
“Oh, that’s cute!” Carly said. “He’s been pining. I love it when guys pine. Especially big, manly ones. It’s so emasculating.”
“He wasn’t pining. He’s just been dealing with some issues. Settling his mom’s affairs. He’s the executor, and … look, this isn’t as romantic as you guys keep trying to make it sound, okay? We’re hooking up. Then he’s leaving. No church bells. Car maintenance.”
Shit. She hadn’t
meant to say that last part. Ellen was going to nail her for it.
Sure enough, Ellen turned to pin her with an eagle-eyed look. “Car maintenance?”
Katie cleared her throat. “Like a tune-up.”
“Or an oil change,” Ellen said.
“Yes.” Katie folded her hands at her waist and looked out the front window. How long did it take to pin a dress, anyway?
“So you’re just basically swapping body fluids with this guy, is that what you’re saying?”
Katie looked to the side. The teenager’s cheeks had gone scarlet. She looked more mortified than Katie felt, which was saying something. “Don’t tell Caleb I said that. Please.”
“Why not, if that’s all it is? There’s nothing wrong with it. Consensual sex is healthy. Especially considering everything that happened with Levi, it’s probably a good thing.”
“Absolutely,” Carly agreed. “No-strings is awesome. You get laid, you get dressed, you go home and watch a movie. God, I remember what that was like. Somebody remind me why I wanted to be a mother, please.”
“Genetic programming,” Ellen said.
“Right.”
“But we’re past all that when it comes to sex,” Ellen said. “A hundred years of feminism, and now it’s the age of the tune-up. That’s great, Katie.”
Katie looked down at the floor, steeped in something more than embarrassment. Something like … disappointment.
She knew the exact size and shape of the palms of his hands. The way his nose wrinkled up on the side when he smiled really big. The way he kissed, the way he moved inside her.
He wasn’t nothing to her, and she hated herself for pretending he was.
What they had together—it was more than sex. She felt grounded around him, soothed and appreciated in a way she wasn’t accustomed to. He was too smart for her, funny and good-looking, so how he managed to make her feel so capable and sexy and complete, she couldn’t begin to fathom. He did, though. Damn it, he did.
“But after he goes back to California, you’ll never see him again, huh?” Carly asked.
“That’s the idea.” Her voice came out scratchy.
“I had one of those once. You know how long it took him to call me after I said goodbye to him forever?”
“No. I don’t—”
“Two days. Then he flew in for the weekend to visit, and we said goodbye all over again. We did that for ages before he finally pulled his head out of his ass and asked me to marry him.”
“Which you should really get around to doing, by the way,” Ellen said with a wry smile.
“Yeah, yeah. What’s the rush? I like stringing him along.”
Katie gazed out at the slushy parking lot. She and Sean had never gotten around to having that conversation about parameters. Neither of them had said a word about long-distance. They didn’t want that.
Did they?
The trouble was, she didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Not from Sean or her job or life generally. It had seemed so simple before she went to Louisville. The whole best-self thing. The whole idea of seizing the reins of her life and steering it where she wanted it to go.
But if her life was a horse, it was a balky, opinionated one, and she needed a lot more riding lessons before she’d be able to make the stubborn fucker canter in the right direction.
She wished she had Ellen and Caleb’s certainty. Carly and Jamie’s. She wished that when she looked at herself in this dress in the mirror of this fancy shop, she didn’t want Sean to see her in it. That she didn’t want him to come to Caleb’s house for the Wednesday-night family dinner and meet the whole clan.
She wished he didn’t make her want so many things that she didn’t want to want, or dream about a life she didn’t even recognize.
“I don’t love him,” she said.
Everyone stopped talking and stared at her.
“Uh-oh,” Ellen said.
Carly grinned. “Booyah!”
“I have the perfect dress,” the shop owner said.
“I think you misheard me,” Katie protested. “I said I don’t love him.”
“Oh, we heard you,” Carly said. “We get it. You don’t love him. You don’t want to marry him and buy a house with him and have his babies and wake up with him every morning for the rest of your life.”
Ellen shook her head. “Nope. You don’t think his opinion’s more important than everybody else’s, and you don’t think he’s fabulously sexy and clever and wonderful. We get it. It’s just an oil change. A super-hot, meaningless oil change.”
Then she and Carly got on a roll, laughing and teasing her, and Katie had to stand there and take it, because she didn’t have the slightest idea how to get out of her dress.
Her phone rang, rescuing her from their cheerful mockery. It was Sean.
“What’s up?” she asked, stepping carefully to the other side of the store and ignoring Carly and Ellen’s departing jibes.
“I got our guy.”
“Seriously? How? Who is it? Why are you calling me? Call the police!”
Sean chuckled. “Slow down, ssweetheart. I used the p-profile you gave me last night to narrow the search results one more time, and when I put them together with what I dug up on the threats, I was able to figure out where they’ve been c-coming from.”
“Where?”
“It’s a public library c-computer in Pella.”
“Ben?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ll have to find out if the library has logs we c-can look at, but it seems p-pretty likely, yeah. And it gets worse.”
“What?”
“I found Judah. Those texts he just sent you? The c-closest ssatellite link puts him in central Iowa.”
“He could still be in Iowa City.”
“Not according to the GPS on his phone.”
“Pella?”
“Pella.”
For a moment, she couldn’t speak. Judah was in Iowa, unprotected, and most likely so was whoever had been threatening him.
“C-clark?”
“Yeah?”
“We have to get our asses back to Iowa, fast.”
Chapter Thirty-five
“Stay. Out.”
Katie braced her arms in the doorway of the hotel bar, glaring at Sean and the three Palmerston bodyguards arrayed behind him.
Sean took a step closer. “I don’t like it. Listen, what if—”
“Back off, or I’ll stomp on your foot,” Katie warned. She was wearing canvas sneakers, so the threat lacked punch, but Sean seemed to register her seriousness.
“I d-don’t like it,” he repeated.
“We already talked about this. You guys can stand guard if you must, but do it from out here. He won’t talk to you, and he might run if he sees you coming.”
“Fine.” His eyes narrowed as he struggled with something. Then he dropped his head and kissed her, a brief press of his lips charged with urgency. “D-don’t get hurt.”
“By Judah? Not likely. If there’s anything for you to be afraid of, it’s that I’ll get drunk.”
She smiled, hoping to lighten the mood and loosen his shoulders, but no luck there. Sean was a lead balloon.
Her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and winced. Caleb again. He was going to keep calling until she picked up and listened to his tirade, because she’d broken every single rule she’d agreed to follow on this case.
Run everything by me. Don’t put yourself in danger. Sean’s in charge. Instead, she’d found out Judah was in trouble and headed directly for it, and along the way, she’d made Sean promise to let her lead.
But this wasn’t about some random threatening fan mail; this was about Judah and whatever was going on in that odd head of his. Katie was the one he confided in, and something told her she was the only person who could find out what he was doing in Iowa unprotected.
She pressed the screen to pick up the call and shoved the phone into Sean’s hand. “Talk to Caleb. I’ll see you later.”
Befor
e he could answer, she’d spun around and walked away. She heard Sean say, “Yeah?” from behind her as she scanned the large, dim space.
Judah sat at the far end of the empty bar. With Ginny.
Katie had never guessed Ginny would be here, but then she hadn’t guessed a lot of things. Such as the fact that Sean had his own company plane, which he kept at the airstrip in Mount Pleasant. Sean’s pilot had flown them to Pella as Katie and Sean talked strategy, drinking Sean’s mineral water and eating Sean’s bags of chips and cookies and mixed nuts.
How had this never come up before, this airplane-ownership business? She’d flown to Iowa and back with him, and he’d completely failed to mention it.
Hey, Sean, don’t you agree that commercial airline travel kind of sucks?
Why yes, Katie, I do. That’s why I own my own plane.
And now Ginny and Judah, cozy together at the bar of the Plains Rest Inn.
Ginny, who still had a place on Katie’s list of Judah Stalker Suspects.
Not that it was much of a list, or that Ginny was much of a suspect. She looked like Bambi sitting over there, young and sweet and smitten.
But being from Pella, she had a link to Iowa, and Katie would do well not to forget it. What if Ginny had realized after Judah’s last stint in rehab that he was never going to fall in love with her? What if she’d become disillusioned and angry, and she’d decided to take her revenge?
By sending him poison pen letters from a computer at the Pella Public Library.
Yeah, no. Totally cockamamie. Katie and Sean had talked about it on the plane, and Sean thought Ben was the strongest possibility. Katie resisted that conclusion, but she had no better theory to offer. A disgruntled Paul, Ben’s sister Melissa, some random angry Iowan—she didn’t have a clue, or any motive to work with.
But Judah would give her the motive if she could get him to talk.
Katie slid onto the open bar stool beside him. “Hey, sailor. Buy a lady a drink?”
He swiveled her way. The smile he gave her was huge and loose and very far from lucid. “Well if it isn’t the prettiest girl in the world.”