Whether or not I had time to talk, I didn’t want to talk about what I suspected she did want to talk about. I wanted to be a good friend. I really did. Bethany and I had grown quite close in the years we’d working together at the paper, and I considered her a close friend.
The problem was I got sick to my stomach every time the thought of that close friend dating Alex even briefly crossed my mind.
So pushing all that nausea and misplaced resentment down, I turned around and gave her my most sincere friend smile. “Sure! Come on in.”
She plopped down in the seat next to my desk and leaned forward toward me as I braced myself for what might come out of her mouth. Bethany had never been one for subtlety or easing into a situation, so I expected the questions about Alex to come fast and furious.
But to my surprise, she didn’t ask about him right off. Instead, she whispered, “Hey, what happened with that guy at the Hotel Piermont? You know what people tend to go there for, so was it a rendezvous gone bad? Maybe a threesome someone decided they didn’t want?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. I’d been so keyed up about having to talk to her that it was more a release of nervous energy than an expression of some amusement. I did have to admit she might not be that wrong about what had happened at the Hotel Piermont.
“I don’t know. We haven’t found out what he was doing there. Did you know him?”
She reached over and picked up the newspaper with Canton Walters’ picture on the front page. “Let me look again. I didn’t recognize him the first time I saw it, though.”
After studying the picture for a few seconds, she shook her head and tossed the paper back on my desk. “He doesn’t ring any bells for me. He looks young, but then again, that might be the blond curly hair. That always seems to make guys look younger, don’t you think?”
“I guess. He was in his early thirties, I think. He was the father of three children.”
Bethany’s expression changed from interested to sad. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. No matter what he was up to at that hotel, he didn’t deserve to get stabbed in the back over it.”
“Hey, have you ever been to a Naughty and Spice Toy party? He may have been associated with the company.”
Her smile returned and she nodded. “Not one for Naughty and Spice, but I’ve been to a party like that. The one I went to was more a lingerie type of party, but there were toys there too. You went with me. Don’t you remember? My friend Erica had it right before she got married.”
I thought back to the party she referred to. Her friend was getting married a few weeks later and then she and her husband were set to move to Europe, or maybe it was South America. I wasn’t sure, but the memory of that night and all those drunken giggling women talking about how much their boyfriends would love the lingerie being offered was as clear as day.
“That’s right. Whatever happened to your friend and her husband?”
Bethany picked up a paper clip from my desk and chucked it into the container for them. “Divorced. She caught him cheating on her with their Brazilian maid. She lives in Boston now.”
South America it was. “Sorry to hear that. I can’t believe I didn’t remember that party when this whole Naughty and Spice thing came up in this case.”
“Speaking of this case…”
Before she went any further since I knew she wouldn’t be as easy to discourage as my editor, I held up my hand and stopped her. “I can’t talk about it. You know that.”
She rolled her eyes and snorted in disgust. “I don’t give a damn about the case, Poppy. My interests are focused on that delicious partner of yours.”
And there it began. There was no way I could just rebuff her on that topic, but there was no way I wanted to encourage her either. I wasn’t sure what my expression was saying, but inside everything in my body was screaming, “No!”
“I don’t know a lot about him, Bethany. I’m not sure how much help I can be.”
A lame response, but when I couldn’t tell the truth, lame was often my fall back.
“I saw him at Diamanti’s last week sitting all alone and couldn’t believe nobody in this town had scooped him up yet. I mean, look around. He’s the hottest guy in Sunset Ridge. I was on a blind date my friend Carey had convinced me to go on, and he was way better than the guy I was stuck with the whole night.”
Desperate to deflect the conversation from its current topic, I chose to ask a question usually out of character for me, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Did you sleep with him?”
“Yes, and it wasn’t anything to write home about. Perfectly pedestrian like he had read a book once on how to have sex and that’s all he knew.”
“Sorry. It sounds awful.”
“You see that twisted face you have on right now? I think that’s what I looked like from the minute he opened his mouth to when he left my place a few hours later. He was just no good. Definitely attractive, you know, but even good looking has to have something else to work with.”
I fixed my expression, which was more a reflection of how much I hated even thinking of Bethany with Alex, and pasted a smile on my face. “The life of a single girl.”
She sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “Speaking of that, why aren’t you two together? He’s good looking. You’re cute as a button. You obviously have the same interests. So what’s up?”
Just as much as I didn’t want to talk about Alex with her, I didn’t want to explain why someone I admired and cared for wasn’t the man I was dating. I didn’t know why. Well, that wasn’t true. I knew why I hadn’t told him how I felt. Why he hadn’t said anything to me was a different matter. Maybe he didn’t feel anything and that’s why he hadn’t said anything.
“We’re just not that way. That’s all.”
Screwing her face into a look of distaste, she repeated what I’d said. “That’s all. Hmmm. Seems strange to me. Is it that he has bad habits or problems I’m not seeing?”
I considered mentioning how I thought he was still in love with his wife who’d been dead for five years and how I had the feeling ever since her death he’d hidden himself away from the world—the land of the living, as he referred to it—but I didn’t say anything about either one. Somehow, it felt like betraying him by saying those things, like telling Bethany about them would make me no better than the busybodies in town.
“I really don’t know. We’re not that close.”
I didn’t really consider that a lie, to be honest. While Alex and I spent hours together each day, in truth, he’d never shared much about his personal life with me, even though I had the feeling he knew a lot about mine. We just didn’t talk about non-work issues much.
Or at all.
Bethany sat up straight in her seat and shook her head. “How can you two not be that close? You’re together every day working on some case or another. You meet him every morning for coffee, and he saved your life when Dominick Hampton was planning on killing you. Those kinds of things usually make two people pretty close.”
The way she listed those things made me feel inadequate as I sat there unable to explain to her why we weren’t that close. I’d always been like this, though. When other females would have had a man wrapped around their pinky finger, if I was with him, he and I would still be arm’s length away and I’d be left wondering why he wasn’t wrapped around my finger. Or any other part of my body.
I didn’t want to think about it anymore.
“We’re friendly. That’s it. I can’t explain it. That’s just how we are. I respect him, and he respects me. I like tagging along on cases because I think he’s a great detective and want to learn as much as I can from him.”
“And what does he think of you?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask him that question.”
That I had good instincts. That I saw things differently than he did. That I was a small town hick who liked to play detective with him because I had noth
ing better to do. That I was a single woman who’d been crowned an old maid by the busybodies of Sunset Ridge.
“So I’m going to stop beating around the bush and just come out with it. Do you have feelings for him, Poppy?”
Sure my expression was betraying the truth I so desperately wanted to hide at that moment, I said in as casual a voice as I could muster, “I don’t feel that way about him.”
“You mean you’ve never considered the idea of the two of you becoming more than just two people who work on cases together?” she asked in complete disbelief.
Swallowing hard, I shook my head and said in a way even I had to admit wasn’t convincing, “No. Not at all.”
“Well, I think you’re crazy, but if you aren’t going to go after him, I am. I mean, unless you have a problem with me doing that. I don’t want this to come between us, Poppy. You’re one of my best friends in this town, and no man is worth ruining a good friendship.”
There was my chance to stop everything she had planned with him. All I had to do was say the word and she’d put the brakes on going after him. Whatever he and I felt could blossom into something naturally, or it could never occur, but her dating him wouldn’t affect it one way or another.
All I had to do was say what was on my mind. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know why, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I didn’t tell her the truth—that I didn’t want her to have anything to do with him.
No, when I opened my mouth, the exact opposite came out. “I don’t dictate his social life, so go ahead. Don’t let me stand in your way.”
Visibly excited, she jumped up and gave me a tiny hug. “Thanks! I think I will. And don’t worry. Nothing that happens between us will change anything you guys do during work hours.”
And with that she left my office, her goal accomplished. Already things were changing. Us? Nothing that happens between us? So now they were already an us, an us separated from me.
As I sat there staring blankly at my laptop screen, jealousy swirled around inside me like some poison infecting my brain and my heart. Thoughts of how Bethany had never had a successful relationship crept into my mind, and as soon as I pushed those away, other negative thoughts about her marched in to take their place.
How every serious relationship of hers had been superficial and meaningless in the end. How she didn’t so much care about men as much as liked what she could get from them.
In just a few minutes, I’d made myself miserable, first from the reality that she was about to ask out the one man I liked in all of Sunset Ridge and then from how terrible I felt after thinking such awful things about her.
Consigned to the fact that I must be the world’s worst friend, I shut my laptop and sat back in my chair to close my eyes. I didn’t want to be jealous. I knew it was entirely my own fault that I hadn’t told her how I really felt about her dating him and had basically given her the green light to do whatever she wanted. I’d had my chance and didn’t take it.
My office began to feel like the walls were closing in around me, so I grabbed my purse and got out of there. I didn’t know where I was going, so I let my feet just take me wherever. As long as I wasn’t sitting in my office stewing in my own jealous misery, that’s all that mattered.
Taking out my phone, I scrolled through my calls to find Alex’s number and put the phone to my ear as it began to ring. He answered quickly, as he usually did.
“What’s up, Poppy?” he asked like he was happy to hear from me.
“I was wondering if you found out anything more about the case.”
“Not really. I’ve been swamped with paperwork Derek dumped on me as soon as I came in today, and there’s been one problem after another about something the garbage men did on their route this morning. Just when I think I might be able to get some work done, I get another call about it.”
“Oh.”
What I really wanted to say was I’d give anything to go on another road trip to get out of this town for at least a few hours. At that moment, I’d have taken a quick coffee break at The Grounds with the two of us at our usual table in the back of the shop.
“You okay? You don’t sound right.”
Again, fate dropped the chance for me to say what I wanted to right into my lap. All I had to do was take it. But once again, I couldn’t find the words needed to say what was on my mind.
So instead I did what I always did. “I’m good. You know how it is. The heat and the humidity gets to you after a while. I’ll be fine.”
“You sure? It sounds like you have something on your mind.”
A thousand ideas ran through my head, most of them about him, but for whatever reason, I didn’t say anything about them. “Just thinking about our case. I’m on my way home to get a big glass of iced tea and relax.”
“No iced coffee for my favorite caffeine addict?” he asked, teasing me like he usually did about how much coffee I drank each day.
“Not today,” I said as I crossed Main Street to get to Barn Street where my house was. “I guess I’m going to go now. I’ll talk to you later, and if I come up with anything about the case, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Sounds good. If I don’t talk to you tonight, I’ll see you tomorrow morning like usual at The Grounds, right? Around eight sound good?”
“Yep. I’ll be there.”
“Good. Talk to you later, Poppy.”
I pressed END and stuffed my phone into my bag as regret threatened to choke me. Why hadn’t I told him what was on my mind? I had the chance to let him know I liked him as more than a friend and work partner, and I didn’t take it. Missing one chance could be excused, but missing a second one?
Now whatever happened, I had no one but myself to blame.
Chapter Eight
The crowd at The Grounds seemed to grow exponentially every time I looked up from checking my phone to see what time it was. Tossing it into my purse, I returned to staring at the front door of the shop. Alex was already ten minutes late, something very unlike him. As I watched for him through the steam drifting up from our coffees, I wondered what could make him so late.
Or who.
A spike of jealousy exploded inside me. I didn’t want to think of who could be the reason he was late. What. Best to stick with what could be the reason he was late. Maybe there was an accident he stopped to handle since he was a police officer for the town. Or maybe Derek had waylaid him as he made his way to our usual morning coffee meeting. Our new police chief loved nothing more lately, it seemed, than to pile more work on his newest hire, and I had never met a man who loved to talk more than Derek Hampton. The phrase talk a blue streak never applied to anyone better.
There could be a million reasons why he was late. None of them necessarily included a certain person. Absolutely.
I looked up after I’d almost convinced myself Bethany had nothing to do with his being late and saw him walking toward me dressed not in his uniform but in jeans and a black t-shirt. A black t-shirt that showcased his incredibly muscular arms and chest. Pushing through a small group of people who’d taken up residence blocking his seat, he finally reached our table and sat down.
“Sorry I’m late. I just got off.”
“Got off? What does that mean?”
He took a sip of coffee, and as my question sank in, a look of confusion came over his face. “What do you mean what does that mean? I just got off my shift. I had to work the overnight, so I just got out. I didn’t think about what time I’d have to work yesterday when I was talking to you. What’s up with you lately? You’re acting really strange.”
I hadn’t realized my behavior had moved into the bizarre, but he did have a point. I couldn’t explain yesterday or why I’d practically freaked out over him saying he’d just gotten off either. God, I was turning into a real fool! Even if he had just come straight to The Grounds after a night of sleeping with Bethany, he’d never tell me and certainly never say he’d just gotten off.
Clearly, I was losing my mind.
Focusing his dark brown eyes on me, he leaned forward and asked, “Are you okay, Poppy? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I answered with a smile as I took a sip of my coffee. “I’m great.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
Satisfied with my answer, Alex looked around the restaurant teeming with customers and mumbled, “This place is mobbed today. You’d think in the middle of July people wouldn’t want coffee so much.”
“Maybe they’re getting iced coffee. It’s all the rage,” I said, not even sure he was talking to me or if he was just thinking aloud.
He shrugged like he didn’t care one way or another. “Maybe. I’ll take my coffee hot and strong no matter what time of year.”
“I started drinking iced coffee recently. It’s not that bad, actually. It just takes a little getting used to.”
Good God, we had officially descended into the world of banalities. I had become the intensely boring, stereotypical Sunset Ridge resident. How much longer before I moved from meaningless chatter about coffee temperatures to gossiping about what other people were doing with their lives and how I felt about those choices?
Alex smiled and lifted his cup in the air as if to toast to something. “By the way, thanks for getting mine this morning.”
“You’re welcome.”
We’d never had truly scintillating conversations, to be honest, but somehow we’d gotten to a point where everything we said verged on the mundane. I needed to change this quickly.
“So where are we on the Canton Walters case? Did you find out anything new since the last time we talked?” I asked, eager to get back on track with our work in the hopes that I could put my silly issues to the side for at least a day.
He opened his mouth to tell me something, but I didn’t hear a word because just as he began to speak I saw Bethany come through the front door and head right toward us. She knew full well we had coffee every morning in this very spot because I’d told her myself more than once, and she’d obviously decided a captive audience of Alex was her best chance to make her move. With every high-heeled step she took, I resented her intrusion even more.
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