There it was, beside the closet. For the first time since encountering Scott in the hospital last night she remembered Katrina, tucked away behind the sliding door, but she didn’t have time to dwell on the doll right then. Snatching up her purse, she grabbed her phone out of it and answered it without checking the caller ID.
“Lise?” It was Joel. Conscious of Scott behind her, knowing that he could hear every word she said whether he wanted to or not, she grimaced inwardly and didn’t turn around. “Can I take you to lunch? I think we were both maybe too hasty last night.”
“There’s no point,” she said. “I meant what I said.”
She heard the sound of footsteps padding across the carpet. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Scott walk into the bathroom, giving her an excellent view of his broad back and small, tight rear. He closed the door while she was still reflexively admiring it, and she turned her attention back to Joel.
“It ’s that damned guy, isn’t it?” His tone was accusing. “You’ve got a thing for him.”
She wasn’t going to talk about Scott, not to Joel. “You and I weren’t going anywhere. You know it as well as I do. We ’re better off as friends.”
From the bathroom came the muffled sound of the toilet flushing. Then a rattle—the shower curtain—and the water being turned on.
Scott was taking a shower. Just the thought made her heart beat faster.
“Friends,” Joel said bitterly. “That ’s what women always say when they find somebody else. Fine, don’t worry, I know when I’m being dumped. Give me a call if you change your mind.”
“Bye, Joel.” He was already hanging up in her ear. She grimaced, disconnected herself, and checked the time: eight twenty-seven a.m. She almost groaned: They’d gotten maybe four hours of sleep, if that. And she needed to call her mother—soon. But first she had to shower, which presented a whole range of interesting possibilities. She could, of course, wait until Scott was finished. Or—not.
“Not” got her vote. Losing the bedspread, she went into the bathroom, which was typical hotel-issue, nothing fancy.
Steam was already starting to fill the air. The mirror was fogging over. The shower sounded like a waterfall. The tub was small, with a plain white shower curtain drawn across it, and behind that shower curtain was Scott. She could just see the top of his head and hear the sounds of him soaping up. Quickly she made use of the facilities, then flushed. He yelped as apparently the cold water cut out.
That made her smile. She was still smiling as she stepped into the shower.
By the time she got around to calling her mother, and learned she was fine, and Robin assured her that she had nowhere more important to be and Lisa should take all the time she wanted before coming into the hospital, it was getting on toward ten. She and Scott had rolled out of bed for the second time not long before. Having brushed her hair back into a sleek ponytail and applied minimal makeup, she had dressed in a yellow T-shirt and navy shorts, all under Scott’s interested gaze. Scott was wearing his suit from the night before, slightly crumpled now, with his tie crammed into his pocket. With scruff darkening his cheeks and chin, and his eyes heavy-lidded from lack of sleep, he looked so impossibly sexy that practically every time she glanced his way Lisa felt her heart skip a beat. At the moment he was holding Katrina upside down as he stared at the mark on her foot. Lisa had already told him all about the doll, including her resemblance to Marisa Garcia’s picture and Barty’s extreme reaction to seeing her.
“Just so you know, the doll looks like you.” Scott handed Katrina back to her. “Maybe your father’s reaction was because looking at her is like seeing a miniature you all scorched and beat up.”
Lisa snorted as she put Katrina carefully back in the closet. “I don’t think so.”
Scott opened the door and held it for her to precede him into the hall. She was headed for the hospital, and he was headed for his apartment to change and then to the office to do some work, but they had agreed to grab breakfast first. Probably somewhere like IHOP, where they had a reasonable hope of not running into anyone either of them knew.
“You ever think about trying to work on your relationship with your father?” From the look he gave her, Lisa knew he knew she wouldn’t welcome the suggestion. They weren’t holding hands or anything, but their arms brushed occasionally as they walked down the hall. They were being cautious with each other, both of them, as if neither of them quite knew what to do with this new romance, but Lisa felt enormously happy just being with him, and for now that was good enough.
“No,” she said baldly.
“Maybe you should.” They were at the elevators by that time, waiting for one to show up.
“Are you really talking to me about my relationship with my father?” Her eyes touched on the injury to his face as the elevator arrived. They got in, and Scott punched the button to go down. “What about you and your father?”
“I’m working on it, okay? Probably so should you.” The elevator stopped, and they stepped out into the lobby. To Lisa’s surprise and dismay, it was full of people clad in their Sunday best, apparently intent on enjoying the lavish brunch spread out on long tables at the far end of the room. Lisa saw multiple interested looks thrown their way as Scott took her arm and steered her toward the door.
“Back in college, we called what I’m doing here the walk of shame,” he muttered for her ears alone, and she grinned.
Just as they made it safely out into the steamy heat of the parking lot, Lisa’s phone rang again. This time she looked at the caller ID: Rinko.
Why he would be calling her on a Sunday morning she couldn’t fathom, but it was unusual enough that she answered.
“You got to come out to the Garcias’ house,” he told her without preamble. “We found something here that you’re going to want to see.”
26
“You can’t come with me.” Lisa stopped behind her car to frown at him. Scott stopped, too, his pants leg just brushing the Jag’s back bumper, which was gleaming in the sun. With the bright daylight that was pouring down around them leaving nothing to the imagination, he looked like a man who had been up most of the night doing scandalous things. Which he had been, of course, but no need to advertise it to the people who worked for him.
“I’m sure as hell not letting you go alone. For one thing, there’s an awful lot of empty countryside between here and there. For another, in case you’ve forgotten, somebody knocked you unconscious last time you were out there.”
She’d seen that look on his face before. Determined was a nice way to put it.
“It ’s broad daylight. And Rinko’s there.”
“No offense to your basement buddy, but I don’t find that all that reassuring. Anyway, you actually think I’d get anything done worrying about you?”
“You think Rinko isn’t going to notice that we ’re together on a Sunday morning? And for your information, you look like the morning after the night before. Sexy but a dead giveaway about how you spent your Saturday night.”
“I’m glad you think I’m sexy. And if we ’re talking about dead giveaways . . .” Leaning forward, he pressed a hot, wet kiss to the side of her neck. The feel of his lips on her skin made her go all soft and buttery inside, but concern that they might be seen more than made up for it. They were in the Marriott parking lot with no one in particular to notice but lots of potential for public exposure, and she cast a swift glance around even as he straightened. “You have a hickey on your neck. Right there.”
Her eyes widened with horror. “I do not!” She clamped a hand to the spot he had kissed. “Do I?”
He nodded and grinned. She punched him in the arm, punishment for that grin, then reached up to pull the coated elastic from her hair. Thick and heavy, it fell around her shoulders, as effective as a turtleneck for throat concealment. Unfortunately, it was just about as hot.
“A hickey is so juvenile. We’re not teenagers.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I got carried away.”
Just remembering how carried away he’d gotten, how carried away they’d both gotten, was enough to make her stomach flutter. He must have seen something of what she was feeling in her eyes, because his darkened. But unlike her, he hadn’t lost sight of the original item of contention.
“You go on to your mother in the hospital, and I’ll go see what Rinko’s found.”
“Not a chance.” Keys in hand, having beeped open the lock, she curtailed the argument by walking around to the driver’s-side door. “You go do whatever it is you need to do, and I’ll go see what Rinko’s found.”
“Not a chance.” Not entirely to her surprise—she hadn’t thought he would just give up—he moved to the passenger door and looked at her over the roof of the car. “If you go, I go.”
“Fine. Just be aware that the office is gossip central, and everybody’s interested in the boss’s sex life.”
“Nice. Uh, how about I drive?”
“My car, I drive.”
“I love it when you go all controlling on me.”
She gave him a hard look. “Keep it up and I really will leave you.”
Double-beeping the key so that his door unlocked, too, she got into the car, which was hotter than the inside of an oven. The seat baked through her shorts and seared the bare backs of her thighs where the shorts ended. Jiggling her legs in an effort to minimize the impact of the hot leather, she turned on the ignition and started rolling down the windows while the air conditioner blasted out hot air. Taking a quick peek in the rearview mirror, she confirmed that she did indeed have a tiny love bite on the side of her neck, and in consequence scowled at Scott, minus his jacket now in clear deference to the heat, as he slid in beside her.
“Told you,” he said, tossing his jacket into the backseat as she shook her hair down over the telltale mark, and she made a face at him.
She put on her seat belt and backed out of the space, glad to be in motion because it provided a modicum of a breeze. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that he was fastening his seat belt, too, and rolling up his sleeves.
As she pulled out of the parking lot, she closed the windows when the air conditioner finally started to kick out cold air, and turned right toward the light. There was some traffic but nothing too bad. Church and early restaurant-goers, mostly.
“I’ll tell Rinko that I called you and picked you up on the way,” she said.
“That ’ll fool him.”
“You know this is going to make things awkward for both of us, if it gets out.”
“Thus my rule about not dating women who work for me.”
“I hate to be the one to point this out, but you done broke that rule, pardner.”
“I’m aware, believe me.” He gestured toward the McDonald ’s up ahead. “Want to grab some drive-thru coffee?”
“Good idea.” Turning into the parking lot, she ordered—she knew he liked his coffee the same way she did, black—then paid with the five-dollar bill he handed over and passed him his cup, along with the change.
As they got under way again she looked at him with the slightest of frowns. “You know, we could just file last night away under the great one-night-stand category and move on. It would make things a lot easier at work.”
He took a sip of his coffee. “I don’t want to do that.”
Her suggestion had been in the nature of an experiment, and she felt a tiny little frisson of relief at his response. Of course, she hadn’t really expected him to agree. The attraction between them was too potent for either of them just to easily walk away. It had some burning out to do first.
“Then we need to be very discreet.” Swallowing some of her own coffee, she cast a reproving look at him. “Which you coming with me out to the Garcia house on a Sunday morning does not fall under the heading of, by the way.”
“Discreet’s a relative thing. As long as you don’t start jumping my bones at the office, we should be okay.” At the indignant look she shot him he grinned, then changed the subject before she could reply. “What did Peyton want this morning?”
“Nosy, aren’t you?” They were out of the city now. She discovered that she was really, really glad of his company after all as she turned down the first of several narrow country roads that led to their destination and traffic became nonexistent.
“Yeah. Are you going to tell me?”
“He wanted to take me to lunch today.”
A beat passed. A sideways glance at his face revealed exactly nothing.
“You planning to keep seeing him?” There it was: The careful neutrality of his tone told her all she needed to know.
She shook her head. Making Scott jealous had turned out to be more fun than she ever would have imagined, but it wasn’t a game she ordinarily played. Straightforward was more her style. And this thing between them—it was too new for her to even characterize it as a relationship, exactly—deserved better.
“Not as anything other than a friend.” She cast him another sideways glance. “I never slept with him, you know. Not once.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good to know,” he said, and smiled at her.
“What about you?”
“If you’re asking me if I’m sleeping with anybody else, the a nswer’s no.”
“I heard you were seeing some woman who works in a bank.”
He looked surprised, then shook his head. “The gossip network’s out of date. That ’s been over for a while.”
Good hovered on her lips, but she didn’t say it. Instead she said, “We ’re here,” because they had just crested a rise that brought the Garcias’ house into view.
He followed her gaze, studying the property with a slight frown as they drew close. Rinko’s van was parked at the end of the long drive, Lisa saw as she pulled in. Everything else, from the For Sale sign to the overgrown grass to the fortresslike woods crowding the property on either side to the small brick ranch house itself, looked exactly the same as it had when she had been there before.
Lisa shivered.
Scott gulped the last of his coffee as she parked behind the van and put the empty cup back in the cup holder between them. Her own coffee was only about half finished, but she suddenly didn’t want it anymore. Feeling more nervous than she cared to admit, she looked around, but Rinko was nowhere in sight.
“Stay close to me, hear?” Typical high-handed Scott, his tone made it a command rather than a question, but under the circumstances Lisa discovered she had no fault to find with the sentiment thus expressed. She nodded, and they got out of the car.
Elsewhere in the area, it was a typical sunny, blazing-hot July day. But here, in the shadow of the tall trees, it was measurably cooler, and darker, and quieter. An insistent cicada chorus was the only sound. The isolation was palpable. It did not, Lisa thought, give off the feeling of a happy place, and she was doubly grateful that Scott had insisted on coming with her. She would never in a million years have admitted it, but right about now, on her own, she would have been scared to death.
So maybe she was overimaginative.
She had already whipped out her phone and was dialing Rinko as Scott joined her on her side of the car.
“We’re here,” she told Rinko when he answered. Then, with a glance at Scott, who was frowning at the house as they walked toward it, she added in a quieter voice, “Um, I brought Buchanan with me.”
Scott flicked her a derisive look.
“Shit.” Rinko’s consternation was obvious. “What’d you go and do that for? He’s going to be pissed. He told me to leave this case alone.”
“Sorry, I had no idea.” She glanced at Scott. He didn’t look pissed. Actually, he was looking pretty mellow. She had a shrewd idea why that was, and Rinko could thank her anytime. She spoke to Rinko again. “Where are you?”
But even as she asked the question it was answered. Three teens emerged from the woods on the far side of the house. Although she was initially surprised to see them, she realize
d that she shouldn’t have been. Of course Rinko would have brought his protégés, and she was willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that Jantzen was somewhere around, too. One of them, the blond girl, Ashley, waved at her. The other girl—Sarah—and the tall boy with the spiky black hair—Matt—just stood there looking her and Scott over with obvious interest. The girls wore shorts, the boy jeans.
“Never mind, I see the kids,” she told Rinko, then waved back at Ashley and disconnected.
“Great.” Scott had seen the teens, too.
“It ’s the wayward lambs,” Lisa reminded him.
“Yeah, I got that. This just keeps getting better and better. If they’re here, my nephew is probably here, and he’s been under the impression that you’re my girlfriend since the night Grayson Springs burned. He also thinks you’re a babe, by the way.”
“You and your nephew talked about me?” The idea of Scott exchanging confidences with a fifteen-year-old was mildly mind-boggling. They were heading across the yard toward the kids now, and Lisa stole uneasy glances at the house. It was suddenly impossible to forget that someone hiding inside had attacked her last time she’d been here. Her skin crawled. Lisa had to remind herself not to walk too close to Scott, or take hold of his arm, or slip her hand into his. Professional was going to be her byword, she was determined, even if she was feeling decidedly spooked.
“He’s the one who told me you got knocked unconscious last time you were here, remember? The rest were just comments made in passing.”
“Did you correct him? I wasn’t your girlfriend.” Lisa noticed she used the past tense only after the words left her mouth.
“No, you weren’t,” he agreed.
It didn’t escape her notice that he used the past tense, too, and her heart gave a funny little flutter at the thought that now, maybe, she was. But at the moment she had other, more pressing, concerns, and so she pushed the whole rather charming concept to the back of her mind to be examined more carefully later.
“Just so you know, you’ve got Rinko worried. He says you told him to leave this case alone.”
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