I Burned Down His House (Love at First Crime Book 3)

by Jessica Frances

  Is there much difference?

  Can I handle that?

  My cell beeps, and I glance down to see a message from Joey.

  J: Don’t let your brother get too close to Karma. I’m already now the second favorite in the house. I don’t need to be third.

  I laugh, looking over to see Grayson playing with Karma in the same way you would expect an energetic child to play with a puppy.

  I snap a photo of them, and when Karma goes in for a big, sloppy kiss, I snap a photo of that, too. Then I send them both to Joey.

  T: Too late.

  Chapter 15

  By the time nightfall comes, I am over Grayson. Not because I’m sick of him, but because I just want some peace and quiet, and he can’t seem to stop talking.

  All through our meal, he talks.

  All through a movie, he chatters away.

  Then, as soon as said movie is over, he rants about it.

  I’m not sure his mouth closes for longer than to form words since we ate lunch hours ago. I am certain, though, if I touched either one of my ears, blood would spill over my fingers.

  I can’t tell if he’s always been like this and I never noticed, or if he’s in a particularly chatty mood.

  As soon as I see his first yawn, I leap to my feet and embrace an early night for a Saturday, escaping to my room.

  The door closing feels like a spark of adrenaline zaps through me. I am so not tired.

  I think about my conversation with Joey just yesterday.

  This morning was supposed to go a lot differently. I was nervous about what was to come. I was also excited. And now I’m completely disappointed.

  I pull out my phone, looking through my text messages with Joey. He’s sent me a barrage of texts in the past hour, stating how bored he is.

  I glance at my clock, deliberating if it’s too late to call. Then I kick myself, because hello? Joey is at work, feeling bored, so of course it isn’t too late to call.

  “Shoot me,” Joey answers as soon as he picks up.

  “I like you how you are—no extra holes needed,” I say on a smile, making myself comfy in bed.

  He hums, clearly thinking this over. “How about burning two holes into my eyeballs, so I can erase what I was forced to witness off my retinas.”

  I wince. “Do I even want to know?”

  “No.” His quick answer is short and decisive, leaving no room for argument.

  “Okay, so then, what are you doing now?”

  “Sitting across the street from a hotel, forcing my eyes to stay open while Clayton likely sleeps like a fucking baby.”

  I shiver just hearing Hart’s name, but latch on to the fact that his activities sound as dangerous as watching a turtle race.

  “So, nothing dangerous?”

  “The most dangerous thing I have to worry about is falling asleep and hitting my head on the car horn,” he mutters on sigh.

  “Can I join you, then?” The words are out before I can think them through.

  Is that really a good idea?

  “Join me?” He sounds like he might be thinking the same thing.

  “Yeah,” I finally say, my words growing more confident as I consider that this might actually be fun. “You said it’s not dangerous, and I’ve never been on a stakeout before.”

  “It’s not as glamorous as it is made out to be on TV shows or in movies.”

  “I don’t know … You were really selling it to me before,” I joke.

  There is silence on the other end. I get the feeling Joey is likely warring with himself over this. I’m sure having your girlfriend—if I’m under that heading yet—with you on a stakeout is probably against the rules. But who is going to know? Besides, I’m not tired. I know I will just lie awake in bed for the next couple hours, wishing Joey was with me. Why wish for something when I can easily make it happen?

  “I’d love your company,” he hesitantly says, and I already hear the but in his voice before he voices it. “But, I’m not sure it would be a—”

  “I’ll bring you something to eat,” I rush to offer.

  Living with Joey these past few weeks has given me a little insider information into the type of person he is. I might as well use my knowledge against him.

  “Get here as soon as you can.”

  I laugh at his eagerness. “So glad you’re excited to see me.”

  ***

  Joey scoffs down the sandwich I bring him, ignoring the large drink. I don’t actually want to know the details of what he does when he has to use the bathroom, and thankfully, he doesn’t want to share those details.

  Tonight, he’s in loose jeans and a long-sleeved Henley shirt pushed up over his forearms. His hair is disheveled in the back, where he no doubt has been leaning against the headrest, and his usual cheeky smile is absent. In fact, he just looks tired.

  “So, did you take photos of the eye-gouging scene you witnessed earlier?” I ask, nodding at the camera resting on the dashboard. It was on the seat I’m currently in, but I suppose a squashed camera isn’t worth much.

  “Yep. We take photos of everything. Every meeting, every place he visits, and every woman he screws.”

  He says this so bluntly I question if he’s not trying to scare me off, or just disperse any misconceptions about what his job involves.

  “Why do you think you guys haven’t caught something yet to tie him to any of this?”

  These investigations aren’t as quickly and easily solvable like they appear on a forty-minute TV show, but the length of time for this investigation seems excessive to me.

  “He’s a shifty bastard.”

  I sense Joey doesn’t want to talk about this, and I’m proven right when he changes the subject.

  “You have a good night with Grayson?” He gives me his attention, shifting to lean more toward his door so he can face me better.

  “It was okay.” I shrug, knowing no matter what, it would have been a million times better than Joey’s night. “He wouldn’t shut up.”

  “About what?”

  “About the movie we watched, about Karma, about you, about me, about his life, about our family. Just everything and anything.”

  “Was he hard on you about us?” he asks, his interest sounding more protective than nosy.

  “Not really. I think he likes that I’m branching out more in life.”

  “Seeing me is branching out more?” He laughs like he thinks that is funny.

  “Well, when my usual Saturday night involved me, my couch, Netflix, and a tub of ice cream, then yes, this is me branching out with you.”

  When his smile shifts to a soft one, I wish we could be somewhere else so I could easily kiss him, or at the very least cuddle up against him.

  “Not sure sitting in a car with me, in the middle of the night, keeping an eye out for a bastard who is probably sleeping soundly, can compete with that.”

  “I know being with you totally knocks that other version of me out of the park.”

  His eyes widen, along with his grin. “Did you just make a baseball reference?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “Shit, and to think I didn’t believe you could get any hotter.”

  I laugh, loving when he not only returns it, but shifts so he can reach out and rest his hand over my thigh. Unfortunately, he rests over the top of my skirt.

  “Just wait until you see us pass first base.”

  “Shit, you’re doing this on purpose,” he half-groans, half-laughs.

  “Batter up, because things are about to get close to the strike zone. Can you make it home in time?”

  He laughs again. “Fuck, I can’t tell if your baseball come-ons are hot or disturbing.”

  “How about we just call them a flyball?”

  He shakes his head, shifting his hand higher up my leg, but still not close enough to where I want him.

  “Shit, I wish I could have taken you out somewhere nice for our first date.”

  “This is a date?”


  “Sure. We ate,” he points out. Giving me the crust of his sandwich is hardly a full meal. “And now we’re talking and getting to know each other better. I know you like to fumble your way through baseball come-ons, and you know I apparently find that fucking hot.”

  I snort, finding myself not at all disappointed that we might consider this our first date. Every time with Joey is more fun than the last, and I do love that I am getting more comfortable with him.

  “We’ve talked a lot these past few weeks, and we have shared several meals together. Why say this is our first date?”

  “Because, those other times we either hadn’t been alone together—thank you very fucking much, Sasha—or we hadn’t admitted out loud that we wanted to fuck then. And as for why tonight, well, since your brother appears to be here to stay for a while, I don’t know when we’ll get another chance. So, this is happening.”

  “And what exactly is this, then? What does a date with Joseph Kim usually look like? What does it usually entail?”

  “This probably won’t surprise you, but I haven’t been on a lot of dates. The few I embarked on, I just wanted good food and good conversation. That was what I strived for.”

  “And how often did that happen?”

  “Well, as I just said, I didn’t go on many dates, partly because it was always so mind-numbing. Now”—his eyes bore into me—“I’m thinking I didn’t have the right woman with me.”

  “Smooth,” I say on an eye roll, wondering if the heat in the car just went up a few degrees. “What happened on your first date? How old were you?”

  He scratches the stubble on his chin, his eyes shifting back to the front of the car and over to the hotel across the street. “I was thirteen, maybe fourteen. It went terribly. I was so nervous that I was sweating badly. Then, after a dinner where I ate a huge burrito with extra beans, I kept farting. And she was so anxious that she was shaking, her palms as sweaty as mine, so that, when I tried to touch her hand, we couldn’t stay connected. I don’t think it helped that we went to the movies after dinner and her father sat directly behind mine.”

  I laugh, loving that Joey’s date went so spectacularly bad. It’s cute, though I do feel a little sorry for that poor girl.

  “Was there a second date?”

  “There was, but that one didn’t happen until we were seniors. We were too traumatized after our first date to set up a second, and then we sort of avoided each other for a while. We went on a few dates when we were older, but when she left for college in California, we decided to just go our separate ways.”

  “Was she your first love?”

  “I liked her. And she liked me enough that I was her first, but no, we weren’t in love. I’ve never been in love before.”

  He really is a straight Harvey!

  “I can’t believe you’ve never been in love before,” I retort skeptically.

  “How many times have you fallen in love, then?”

  I think back over my life. “Twice.”

  “I know about douchebag, but how about you tell me about this other asshole?”

  I laugh. “Glenn wasn’t an asshole, and he didn’t break my heart. We just ended up drifting apart. We were young, still in school, and everything was new and shiny. The signs that we weren’t really compatible were there. We had completely different likes. We had different visions for our future. We only had our school and some friends in common, but we never saw that. We just loved hard and fast.”

  “And what made you realize otherwise?”

  “We just grew apart. We started spending more time with our friends than each other. We didn’t even eat lunch together in the end. It was very anticlimactic.”

  I smile, thinking back to that childish love. At the time, it felt so real, so solid and tangible. Now, looking back, I realize there was almost nothing to it.

  “I didn’t date much in school,” Joey announces.

  “Really? Why?”

  “My friends were popular. Zander had some weird dreadlocks phase going on, so he wasn’t in super high demand, but Declan and our other friend Artie, they had a lot of girls falling over themselves to be noticed by them.”

  I haven’t met Artie yet, and the idea of Zander with dreadlocks is laughable, but Declan is incredibly good-looking. I can already imagine he was a heartbreaker at school.

  “I bet you were popular, too.”

  “By default. I was friends with those guys, so I became noticeable because of that. Most girls aren’t keen to date the Asian guy.”

  My mouth falls open. “Seriously?”

  “Well, yeah. It probably also didn’t help that I was a pretty scrawny kid who was quiet and lacking any sort of impressive sporting achievements.” He snorts, sounding so self-deprecating that I want to shake him.

  “I would have been all over you if we went to school together.” Hell, I’m barely keeping my control now in this car. I had almost zero self-control when I was at school. I would have been head-over-heels with Joey if we met as young adults.

  He smiles over at me, squeezing my leg, his hand still over my skirt, unfortunately. “I think I would have been all over you, too. But I’m glad we didn’t meet then. As soon as I hit college, I went nuts. I found so many women interested in me, and I was definitely interested in what they were offering. I discovered that I fucking loved sex.”

  I roll my eyes. It seems most things lead to sex with men.

  “If we had met then, we likely would have had plenty of sex,” I remind him.

  “At that age, it was more about the quantity rather than the quality. I think I just needed to get that out of my system so I could learn to appreciate the quality.” He toys with the edge of my skirt, his eyes full of desire.

  He seems so confident that we will match, that we will be good together, which piles on more pressure for our future first time together.

  Not everyone is compatible in the bedroom. Just because he never met a woman he couldn’t satisfy, doesn’t mean he won’t meet a woman who can’t satisfy him.

  I raise my eyebrow at him. “And how can you appreciate anything when we have done nothing together?”

  “Easy.” Joey gives me his trademark smirk.

  “Easy?” I sound as disbelieving as I feel, wanting to shake him. How can he think this is easy when I am freaking out about it?

  “Yep.” He nods, not at all fazed by my tone. “Because, there are layers to sex.”

  “Layers?” I scoff. This has to be some sort of bullshit he’s about to try to sell me.

  “Sure. There is want and need. There is fast and slow. There is mind blowing and just taking the edge off. But with a complete stranger, you can’t get past those layers.”

  I consider what he’s saying, not finding any untruth there.

  “Okay, so what other layers are there?”

  “There is also an emotional component when you know someone. You’re more vulnerable and bare. Sex can be many things, but with strangers, it can never be completely healing, or therapeutic, or life-altering.”

  I’m not sure if I can believe that. Then again, I have never had meaningless sex before. I suppose just from that title, it sort of sells what Joey is saying.

  “How do you know this if you’ve never been in love?”

  “You don’t have to be in love to peel back another layer. But I think being in love would strip past all layers all at once. You would feel it all, and I assume that’s pretty fucking intense.”

  I look past him, thinking back to my ex-husband. I loved him, but sex was never anything special between us. If what Joey is saying is true, then we should have felt all that. Yet, we didn’t. Is that because we were always doomed? Or because we just weren’t compatible?

  “So, what you’re saying is, you’re ready to feel sex like that?”

  “What I’m saying is, when I was a kid, and up until a short while ago, I couldn’t look past those first layers. I was happy to fuck whoever looked my way. But, now I want more. I don’t want a
nother faceless woman. I want someone who means something to me. I want what we do with each other to be important. And I want that woman to be you.”

  My heart stutters, and I take a few breaths to get myself back under control. Joey is saying all the right things.

  This conversation feels important. It started out lightly, yet now it has delved into something much deeper.

  “Okay, so why choose me? You’ve had many women in your lifetime. Hell, you’ve had a lot of women since I moved in next to you. I’m sure I don’t know about half of them. Why zero in on me?”

  Joey considers me while he thinks of his answer. I wonder if he can tell I basically stopped breathing.

  “I’m not going to feed you some bullshit line. I like you a lot, Teags. We’re compatible, you make me laugh, and I find you irresistible. And I think we met at the right time. My eyes are open and I’m paying attention. You lived next to me for six months, and I never bothered to get to know you. I regret that now, but seven months ago, I wasn’t ready to see more.”

  I like his words. They feel genuine and real. Not a cheesy line and not bullshit.

  “To be honest, I’ve liked you since I first saw you.” I pause, unsure if I should continue, but trust has to start somewhere. Sure, he might make fun of me, but if I hold things back from him, then what’s the point of giving us a try? “I worked up countless fantasies in my head of us together, but after you moved in with me, I was terrified. I was sure being in close proximity to you would mean my fantasies would crash and burn, and I would end up hating you. Instead, I found out you were better than I could have ever imagined.”

  He grins. “You seriously liked me since the first time you saw me? Isn’t that when Karma knocked you over?”

  “No, I saw you before then. Mostly, it was just you walking to and from your car, or walking Karma. I liked that you had an easy smile. I liked your obvious confidence. I liked how hot you were, and that you weren’t afraid to wear T-shirts and pants tight enough to show off your muscles.”

  He laughs, shifting forward. I’m not sure if he consciously meant to do it.

  “I’m glad you could appreciate my fashion sense.”