by Lyla Payne
“I’m going upstairs. You stay down here,” I direct him. “We’ll meet at the front door in five minutes and get out.”
Leo gives me an exaggerated salute and wanders into the sitting room on our right, poking at the top of an antique desk. I take the steps on my tiptoes so that my flip-flops don’t pop against the wood, then start opening doors. There are at least five off the main upstairs foyer, and a second, less opulent flight of stairs leading up to a third floor.
I snoop around the second level, finding a music room, three guest rooms, and the master bedroom. I spend a few minutes rummaging about in the last but don’t find anything strange, except for the fact that it’s super clean. He must have a housekeeper along with a decorator. Or a psychiatrist who’s hopefully managing his OCD with proper medication.
The stairs take me to an odd-shaped room that’s connected to the dormer windows at the top of the house. The ceiling slants so sharply on each side up here that I have to duck to avoid smacking my head. It’s an office of sorts, messier than the rest of the house, but it still manages to give off an obsessive vibe.
Stacks of papers, organized by different colored sticky tabs, are arranged on a giant corner desk that takes up the space under the windows. There are two computers and a printer sitting on it, plus an iPad charging in a wall outlet. The slanted walls are papered with all kinds of maps—land surveys, topography, climate, plus a bunch more that are beyond any map-reading skills I ever possessed—and there are colored pushpins in each one.
I stare at them for a while but can’t make heads or tails of it. A glance at my watch says I have about ninety seconds before I have to be downstairs, so I hurry over to the desk and start riffling through the piles. From the look of things, Jasper is definitely looking into the illegal happenings out in the mountains. Each colored tab corresponds to a different family, and it doesn’t take long for the Raynard name to pop out.
What surprises me is a plain, white thank-you card filed with the same orange tab as the Raynard file attached to it. I flip it open and my eyes pop:
Jasper,
I just wanted to say thank you for everything that you’ve done for me and my family. I appreciate it, and I’ll honor our agreement. Always.
It’s signed G. Davis.
Glinda knew Jasper, they had an agreement, and she sent him a thank-you card. The guy doesn’t live in Heron Creek so they’d have little reason to be acquainted, and even if he did, I never heard Glinda thank anyone for anything.
I grab the card and fly down the two flights of stairs, stuffing it into my purse along the way. Leo’s waiting by the front door, muscles tense and arms crossed impatiently. He doesn’t say anything, just opens the door and ushers me back out into the evening. It’s Sunday, which makes it a little odd that the suburban street is quiet, but the smoldering weather isn’t exactly inviting. Not to mention that this doesn’t look like the kind of neighborhood that struggling parents with small children can afford, so maybe it’s full of elderly folks already snoozing in their recliners.
We climb into the car without incident, and Leo pulls away from the curb slowly and pilots us back to town. It’s almost seven, and I text Beau to tell him we won’t be having dinner until about eight. I don’t lie or say anything about working out; if he asks about my evening, I’m telling him the truth. He’s right: He’s never done anything to deserve my lies or to make me think he’s some kind of controlling, militant asshole. Even if he doesn’t agree with my decisions, it doesn’t mean I should hide them.
He won’t like me spending even more time with Leo, and he’ll probably be pissed that my old friend is willing to accompany me on new exploits, but the bad blood between the two of them has nothing to do with me. I’m certainly not deciding who to be friends with based on other people’s opinions. I like them both, I’m spending time with them both. End of story.
“So, what did you find?” I ask once we’re back on the freeway
“Nothing that screams he’s guilty, but I mean, you saw that place. How can he afford it on a county sheriff’s salary?”
I purse my lips, watching the trees whiz by outside the window. “I don’t know, but that’s not proof of anything. Maybe he’s got family money. What else?”
“Not much downstairs. That place is super clean, even his office.”
That gets my attention. “Wait, there’s an office downstairs?”
“Well, more of a den, really. Animal heads on the walls, pictures of him reeling in giant fish, shit like that. Doesn’t look like he actually uses it for work.” Leo slides a glance toward me. “What about you? Any luck?”
“Maybe.” The thank-you note ties Glinda to the sheriff, and the opulent house and the fact that he’s an avid hunter add to my suspicions, but even with all of it, we don’t have anything more than circumstantial evidence. Nothing that Dylan Travis is going to listen to, and probably not Beau, either. “He knew Glinda. There’s a thank-you note from her, and they had some kind of deal or something, but it doesn’t say what for—maybe she gave him free haircuts in exchange for hunting permits. Could be anything.”
“So, basically we learned that he’s a good suspect but didn’t find anything that’s going to make him a better one than you. Given that the murder weapon was found in your car and all.”
“Thanks for the reminder, Leo.”
“Anytime, Gracie. Anytime.”
Chapter Seventeen
I’m feeling frustrated by the time I get home, and the appearance of the historical male spirit irritates me more than usual. He doesn’t give me any hints about who he is, as per usual, but it doesn’t help that I don’t have a clue what the right questions to ask would be, either. Instead I give him a lecture about privacy and shut him out of the bathroom while I duck into a quick shower to rinse off the sweat—a pointless exercise—and slip into a comfortable pair of white shorts and a loose Braves tank top for the evening at home.
Beau’s sitting on the couch when I come down, looking handsome in a linen button-down and khaki shorts paired with worn boat shoes. I settle next to him and steal a brief kiss, and he smells like shampoo and tastes of his particular sweetness. The hungry look in his eyes sends shivers down my spine.
The memory of where I’ve been all afternoon dampens my pleasure at seeing him, because once he finds out it’s definitely going to dampen his pleasure at seeing me.
“You look nice,” I tell him with a wink.
“Why, thank you, ma’am.” He gives me an easy smile. Everything about Beau is easy, aside from the expectations surrounding his job, and that’s part of the problem. It’s too easy to see him sliding effortlessly into my life.
“Did you have fun with Leo?” Amelia asks, walking into the room with a large pizza box and a stack of paper plates that she sets on the coffee table.
“Of course,” I reply, snagging a plate and a slice of pepperoni. She does the same and then flops into a deep chair-and-a-half to avoid Gramps’s recliner.
She doesn’t ask anything more and neither does Beau. The latter doesn’t make any comment at all, even though I assume he’d be happier if Leo Boone and I were to cease and desist our friendship.
Or maybe not. Leo makes me laugh and he makes my life in Heron Creek more like it was, and those are good things. Even though Beau doesn’t like Leo, I think he recognizes that spending time with my old archenemy makes me happy. And he’s seriously one of those guys who can say “I only want you to be happy” and not sound like a complete and utter douchebag in the process.
Beau asks Millie how the pregnancy is going, and she talks about that for a few minutes before redirecting the conversation back to him and his job. I munch pizza, sinking into an internal pity party as I wonder whether or not I’ll be eating prison food soon. Detective Travis hasn’t been back around, but it’s only a matter of time. They may not have any concrete evidence that puts me at Glinda’s house the night of the murder specifically but if enough circumstantial evidence piles up he’ll char
ge me anyway once the pressure to close the case starts building. Honestly, he might get a conviction, too.
“We’re reviewing contractor and artist applications for the renovation of Riverfront Park,” Beau says, wiping a bit of grease and sauce from his lips with a crumpled napkin. “Other than that, we’re in the middle of a budget review and a hearing over whether or not we need a second stop sign downtown.”
I smile at that, forcing my mind back into the conversation. Might as well enjoy my last moments of freedom with my favorite cousin and a seriously sexy politician. “I heard that guy from your office, Randy, talking about it at your party like it wasn’t going to go through. It did?”
“Yeah, there’s been some pretty heavy opposition to it, but the expenses were just approved at the last council meeting. Provided some research turns up who actually owns the land,” Beau supplies. He tilts his head, as though something interesting just occurred to him.
“What?” I ask, wary of his expression.
“Nothing. It’s just that Glinda was actually one of the big opponents to the expense. Thought the park was fine the way it is, even though Doc Nathan treats two kids a week for rusty cuts they got on that mermaid sculpture.”
“Glinda wasn’t big on change,” Millie says, a little distracted by a report on the news. The sound is too low to hear but the headline says something about a resurgence of the Gullah culture near Savannah, Georgia—kind of our region’s answer to voodoo.
“That’s true enough,” I quip, trying to pull her back to the conversation before she disappears into a rabbit hole of what-ifs. Mrs. LaBadie isn’t messing around with Gullah things—she’s Haitian voodoo through and through. “She hadn’t even changed her hairdo since the seventies.”
That makes my cousin laugh, and a smile touches Beau’s eyes as they meet mine. His gaze says he understands my concern for Amelia, and that he loves me for it.
Loves me.
No. It’s possible that feelings are deepening and things are getting serious because of all the time we’re spending together—and our growing intimacy—but it’s not there. Not yet.
“She looked fabulous, though. Like a Charlie’s Angel.” Millie laughs harder. “She’s the only person in town who didn’t get her hair done at Sonny and Shears!”
Beau chuckles, and it reaches me, too. It feels so good to be laughing with them, genuinely amused by a woman who was nothing if not a character. It’s been a while since I’ve laughed at anyone except myself, at anything other than my own pathetic situation in life, and even though my ability to do those things is keeping me alive, this feels much better.
We calm down after a while and watch last night’s The Daily Show on the DVR. Amelia nods off in her chair before it’s over, so I wake her up and send her to bed, then give Beau my version of bedroom eyes, which probably aren’t all that sexy.
I want him, deep in my gut. In my blood, which grows hotter as he climbs off the couch and yanks me into his arms, lifting me against his chest as his lips find mine and devour them. My arms go around his neck, holding tight. My tongue tastes his, drowns in the perfect circle of emotion and protection and attraction formed by our bodies.
“Did you bring your jammies?” I whisper against his mouth, my lips curling into a smile.
He returns it, the scruff on his cheek and chin from a long day scratching my skin in the most erotic way. “I’m afraid I forgot.”
The way he murmurs it, soft and full of promise, puts images into my mind of him naked that cover me in shivers. He squeezes me tighter, fingers skimming the bare skin exposed between my shorts and tank top before setting me back on my feet.
“Lead the way.”
I take his hand, pulling him behind me up the stairs and into the blue-and-cream room down the hall. It’s weird and uncomfortable for a moment, thinking about having sex in the room I occupied as a child. As though the space itself is innocent, somehow, and about to witness an event too mature, too raw, for it to understand.
Then Beau’s hands pull my shirt over my head from behind, and his fingers unclasp my bra and caress my skin until they find my breasts, and every thought other than having him flies from my mind. I spin in his arms, freeing him from his shirt, then his shorts, before stepping out of my own. Moonlight covers the room like a mist, muting the colors of the day and softening the hard edges of my world. My mind tries to bring back the events of my caper with Leo, the devils on my shoulders whispering harsh reminders that Beau won’t forgive me for trying to paint Jasper as a suspect, but the moon banishes the thoughts with her eerie glow.
Beau’s lips and tongue skim my neck, my collarbone, my shoulder, teeth nipping here and there as he walks me backward and we tumble onto the mound of sheets and down that I left in a tangle on the bed.
We’re hungry for each other, for the perfect completeness of being joined. At the moment he pushes inside me, we both stop, watching each other’s expression and breathing the same air for several seconds. I don’t know what Beau’s thinking, but a blank feeling of ecstasy mingled with peace cradles my brain, my body. Like there’s nowhere else I’d rather be, no one whose face I’d rather have in front of mine, and it’s something I haven’t felt in so long it makes me want to cry.
Beau shifts before that can happen, chasing me away from the brink of an overflow of emotions and allowing my baser desires a chance to come out and play. We move together, we laugh as we change positions and sweat and freeze, thinking we heard Amelia in the hall, but in the end we’re both speechless, wrapped up in each other’s flesh and arms and hearts as we drift away, together.
I wake up with the sun, having forgotten to close the curtains the night before for deliciously wicked reasons. My muscles are sore, my body tingling inside and out as I stretch out on the bed, trying not to disturb the still-sleeping mayor at my side. He doesn’t appear younger while he sleeps, but the angles of his face seem to fit better, somehow. The sharpness of his jaw flows right into his full lips, the bump in his nose the perfect complement to his broad forehead. Since the moment I met him I’ve thought that he’s beautiful—but in the way a sculpture is beautiful, not in the too-pretty way of so many movie stars.
Beau’s face and body speak of promises kept and beliefs backed up by actions, of a hard line that balances an empathetic heart. He might come off as contradictory to some—and based on what Mel’s told me of his past, of his unwillingness to budge on the law or see any gray area between the world’s blacks and whites, he does fit that description—but to me, it suits him.
It melts my heart even as I know it will be the thing that pulls us apart.
My life is pretty much all gray area. The only black and white in my world is family. Even my Aunt Karen, who is a hard person to love, is above the rest of humanity when it comes to the people I would do anything to protect, who it would kill me to lose.
It’s a list that’s gotten too short over the past couple of years, after losing Mom, Grams, and Gramps in quick succession.
Other than family, and things like rape and child molestation and other obviously evil things, there’s not much I consider nonnegotiable.
Even knowing in my soul that we’re going to face problems, I stare at Beau a little longer. A lock of dark hair falls onto his forehead, which is wrinkled as though he’s thinking very hard in his dream. His breaths are even, calming the nervous pounding of my heart. No one else can do that without a word.
Not since Gramps died.
We spent half the night awake, and there’s a good chance I’m going to get another round out of him before we both have to leave for work. The guy’s anatomy is always raring to go, much to my delight.
I roll over, intent on getting out of bed and using the bathroom before Beau wakes up. “Great goose feathers!” I gasp.
He groans and rubs his eyes, and Glinda’s ghost, who’s wearing a disapproving but somehow intrigued frown, fades from sight.
“What did you just say?” he asks, peeking out from under one
sleepy eyelid.
“I haven’t the slightest idea. It just came out.” I flick another glance at where the spirit had been, but she’s gone. It makes me feel a teeny bit violated to think that she or the mystery ghost could have been an uninvited audience last night. Perverts.
“Mmm,” he mumbles, reaching out and pulling me to his chest.
The soft hairs on his chest brush the bare skin of my back, calling every last nerve ending to attention, but none of that can erase the fact that I really have to pee. I struggle loose, giggling as he tries to hold me hostage. “I’m going to pee on you if you don’t quit it. Is that what you want?”
He lets go, propping himself up on some pillows and watching me climb out of bed with an appreciative expression. “Well, I know we haven’t really had the fantasy-and-fetish discussion, but if you want to start now …”
“Ew! I am not doing that.”
He laughs, a deep, happy sound that curls my toes into the beige carpet. “I’m joking, Gracie Anne. I mean, not about the fantasies, but about that being one of them. Go pee.”
I scurry into the bathroom, my head full of potential Mayor Beau fantasies and how exactly they might involve me while I take care of business. Then I brush my teeth, but as I look myself in the mirror and think about the man in my bed and the kind of relationship I want to have, the joy drains out of my eyes, then my heart, until it’s puddled on the bathroom floor at my feet.
I can’t lie to him about where I was yesterday, not even by omission.
My heart hangs heavy when I step out of the bathroom, clothed in a nightshirt that was hanging on the back of the door. My hair’s a little more in place and my mouth tastes like something other than an old sock, and those two things, combined with not being naked, help me feel more prepared to face the music.