Murder Mayhem and Mama

by Christie Craig

  She shook her head as if she considered him pathetic. And she was right. Standing before her was one heartbroken guy wearing alphabet soup.

  He swallowed. “Go ahead. I deserve some of your lip.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Give me one reason why I should tell you where she is.”

  Relief swelled in his chest. “How about two? Because I love her. And because I think she loves me or else you’d already be dismembering my body and feeding it to the roaches.” God, he hoped he was right.

  She propped a hand on her hip and then her gaze tightened. “Are you wearing alphabet soup?”

  “Where can I find Cali?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Try her mother’s house.”

  He smiled. “I owe you big time.”

  “Pay backs are hell,” Tanya called as he ran off.

  ~

  Brit parked beside Cali’s Honda in the drive and knocked on the glass storm door. December cold cut through his windbreaker, but he still sweated.

  “Come in,” Cali called from inside. “I’m just trying to finish up.”

  Brit’s heart raced. Damn, he’d missed hearing the soft timber of her voice. Missed her. He opened the door, and looked around. The place was different. It looked like Cali. Soft colors, organized bookshelves. And it smelled like her. He inhaled the scent like a starving man coming home for dinner. And that’s what he was, starving. Starving for her.

  “I opened some wine.” Her voice came from a back bedroom.

  Had Tanya called her? Was she expecting him? Did that mean he had a chance? His level of hope inched up.

  I’m not a duck. He repeated to calm his nerves. He loved her. And he’d spend the rest of life proving that to her if she’d let him.

  Her voice rang out again. “Pour the wine and bring me one.”

  He spotted the bottle and two glasses on a table. He set the bag down. His hands shook as he poured the wine.

  “I can’t wait for you to see how this painting came out,” she called out again. “I think it’s my best one.”

  Cali was painting again. Fighting a case of serious angst, he followed her voice down the hall to the third bedroom.

  She stood with her back to him. Her shoulder shifted ever so slightly as she brushed paint on a canvas. Her blond hair shimmered down her back, and the wispy strands caught the evening sun spilling through the uncovered windows. She wore a fitted white T-shirt and a pair of gray sweats. On her backside were smeared paint prints where she’d wiped her hands.

  “I was about to call to see what was keeping you.” She still didn’t turn around.

  Disappointment flickered in his gut when he realized that Cali didn’t know it was him. “Cali?” he whispered her name.

  Her hand stopped making the tiny brush strokes. Her back stiffened. Brit took a deep breath.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Brit’s heart felt like it doubled over. “Please don’t ask me to leave.”

  She dropped her brush in a cup at the edge of the easel and, slowly, as if it cost her to do so, she faced him.

  He wanted to touch her so badly his hands shook. Instead, he handed her a glass of wine before he spilled it.

  She took it and then cleaned her other hand on the bottom of her sweats. “I thought you were Tanya.”

  Brit’s gaze fell to the painting—two people in bed, nude, in a lover’s embrace. Then he noted the cat in the painting, perched up on the nightstand beside the bed. His breath caught when he saw the cat had a missing ear. He looked at Cali, and her blush told him he was right. “It’s us.”

  She pushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Let’s go in there.” She moved past him and waited at the door.

  He didn’t follow. His gaze moved around. They were everywhere—five, six, seven of them. Painted images. Each one took him back to a moment in time. His and Cali’s time. Captured emotions bounced off the canvases and filled his chest until he thought he might explode.

  He didn’t know what to say.

  The soft patter of her bare feet on the wood floor making tracks down the hall filled his ears, but he stayed in the studio. He attempted to gather his thoughts, to enjoy Cali’s work, and to let the hope now flourishing in his chest chase away the God-awful fear that she wouldn’t care anymore. He knew differently now. She cared. Which meant he still had a chance.

  Turning, he walked back into the living room. She stood by a window looking out onto the backyard. Slowly, she faced him, but stood silent.

  He stopped a few feet away from her. “I’ve missed you so damn much.”

  Seemingly unimpressed with his confession, she looked away.

  He forced words out of his mouth. “I was wrong.”

  “Yes, you were.” Spoken so quietly, her words seemed to float in the air.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to get you to forgive me.” The pause grew heavy. “I know you still care or you wouldn’t be painting us.”

  She stared down at her bare feet. He followed her gaze to her toenails, red-tipped and perfect like the rest of her. When she didn’t answer, he realized she didn’t plan on making this easy for him. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t deserve easy.

  He deserved hell. But it had been hell. “I spent four weeks in Mexico waiting by the phone. Praying you’d call.”

  She kept her eyes downward. “You left without even speaking to me.”

  He tried to think of a way to pretty up the truth he needed to tell her, but the truth wasn’t pretty. “My father beat my mother, Cali. I saw it. I got in the middle of it. I hated him. Then he died, and I thought things were going to be good.” His palms itched with nerves. He’d never told anyone this.

  Silence fell like soft rain. “But Mom, she brought home someone else just like Dad. Every time I stood up for her, but she chose them over me.”

  He took a sip of wine because his next words hung in his throat. “When I met you, I assumed you were like her.”

  She studied her wine glass, not speaking, but listening. It was more than he’d thought she’d give him. “When I found out that you didn’t think Stan was guilty, it felt just like those times with my mom.”

  He inhaled, wanting to say it all, needing to say it all. “I realize now that I was less afraid of you being like my mom, than I was afraid of me being like my dad. Or maybe just being like both of them. I’ve always felt relationship impaired. That’s why I left with even talking to you. I felt you deserved better.” His voice cracked and his pride took a beating when his eyes began to sting.

  “And now,” she asked in almost a whisper.

  “Now, I spent a lot of time this last month thinking about who I am and who I’m not.”

  She looked up.

  He continued. “I don’t want to be like them. I don’t have to repeat their mistakes.”

  She nipped down on her bottom lip. Was she going to ask him to leave?

  “I’ll beg. I’ll do whatever it takes.” Tears filled his eyes, but his pride could be damned. This was bigger than pride.

  She set her glass on the table.

  “I love you.” The words he’d never told a woman came out. His breath hitched in his throat. He set his wine down beside hers. “I love your laugh and the way you blush when you say sex. I love watching you eat all proper like. I love that you seldom cuss and that you bite your lip when you’re nervous. I love that you’re so nice to everyone you meet. I love you. All of you. Every single thing about you.”

  She took a step closer. Did that mean something?

  Her blue eyes washed with emotion. Her next step brought her against him. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t repeat the words he needed to hear, but she rested her cheek against his chest. Was this good-bye or welcome home? He was so damn scared. But he couldn’t help but wrap his hands around her back, and bury his face into her hair. He would take this moment for however long it lasted. He savored the feel of her against him. She felt so right in his arms. So right in his life. Was having forever too much to ask?r />
  “Your mother,” he said, finding it hard to admit. “She…I had a dream.”

  Cali raised her head and rested her chin on his chest as she gazed into his eyes. “You dreamed about her?”

  He nodded and noticed she had a little piece of soup pasta, an O and P on her cheek. He reached up and knocked them off. “She told me, when it wobbled like a duck and quacked like a duck, it was duck. She said I wasn’t a duck. I think what she meant was that I’m not like my dad. I’m . . . I’m a softy.”

  A smile touched her lips. “Sounds like Mom.” Emotion filled her eyes again.

  A knot of fear formed in his throat.

  She looked at his chest. “Why do you have alphabet soup all over you?”

  “Oh, I almost got in fight with a guy I thought was your new boyfriend.” He just stared at her. It was heaven looking at her. His chest filled with a light, bubbly feeling.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  He smiled. “I know, I found out.”

  “What?” she asked.

  God, being with her felt so damn good. He wanted to laugh, to pick her up and swirl in her his arms. “I went to your old apartment and he answered the door.”

  And he threw soup on you?” she asked.

  “No, his wife or girlfriend did. Well, she threw it on him because she thought he was cheating on her again. And I was standing by him.”

  She chuckled. “That’s crazy.”

  “Yeah, it pretty much was.”

  She continued to look up at him. “I hope you explained.”

  He nodded. “I did.”

  She knocked a few more letters from his coat. Then she met his gaze. “I love you, too.”

  He let go of a deep breath that he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. “Damn, for a minute there, I didn’t think you were going to say it.”

  He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. And she never flinched. Even when the kiss ended they stood there, holding on to each other.

  “Oh.” With one hand, he reached for the bag he’d left on the table. The other he kept around her. It might be a while before he let her go.

  “What is it?” She laughed when she pulled out the sweater she’d left at his office nearly two months ago. “I guess this means you want your leather jacket back.”

  He smiled. “As long as I have you, you can keep it.”

  A teasing glint lit her eyes. “What if I keep both you and the jacket and let you borrow it occasionally?”

  “Excellent plan,” he said. “But I have to warn you. If you keep my jacket, I’ll be hanging around a long time. I’m talking commitments and official documents and all that stuff.”

  She smiled. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

  “No, I was planning on asking you that question with much more flare, a ring, some flowers.”

  “Really?” she grinned.

  “Yeah, but if I was asking would you—”

  “Yes!” she said with enthusiasm. “I’d say yes.”

  TURN THE PAGE for an exciting preview of the first book Christie Craig’s brand new Hotter in Texas series, Don’t Mess with Texas! Available from Forever in September 2012!!

  **This chapter is printed by permission of Hachette Book Group, Inc. All rights reserved.**

  Chapter One

  “Why are you so sad, Tio?”

  Tyler Lopez looked down at his six-year-old niece. Her brown eyes were so warm they could . . . They could persuade a grown man to make a complete idiot out of himself.

  Pinching the red ball rubber-banded to his face, Tyler dropped his clown-suited ass on the picnic bench beside the birthday girl. When the real clown canceled late last night, his sister, Samantha had called him in desperation. Anna will be so disappointed. Tyler adored all his nieces and nephews, but there was something about Anna — quiet and a bookworm like himself — that made her his favorite. And that made the thought of disappointing her impossible.

  “I’m a clown. Clowns aren’t sad.” He looked out at the twenty or so family members mingling together at the other picnic tables in his sister’s backyard. Two of his brothers were pointing and laughing at him. If Anna wasn’t sitting there, he’d have shot them the bird. The Texas humidity, still almost unbearable in September, made the clown suit cling to his arms and…

  “Da…dang it!” he muttered and reached down and caught the little orange kitten who had mistaken his leg for a climbing post. Bringing the spirited, blood-drawing feline on top of the table, he knew he couldn’t complain too loudly or Anna’s mother would be over here to give him hell. Especially since, he’d given the kitten to his niece last month as an early birthday present. And according to his sister, the animal was a reincarnated demon. Hence the kitten’s name, Damian.

  “Some clowns are sad,” Anna said. She closed the book she’d been reading and gave Damian a purr-inducing scratch behind the ear.

  “Not this clown.” He told himself it wasn’t a lie. Tyler gave the cat an under-chin rub. That led to the kitten jumping into Tyler’s lap and curling up. No doubt the feline remembered who’d snatched him up from the middle of I-10 before he got smeared on the freeway. And he’d better remember it — Tyler had almost become an oil spot in the road himself in the process.

  “You remember my friend, Austin?” Tyler asked Anna. “Well, this is his suit and he specifically told me it was a happy clown.” Austin, one of the partners at their private detective agency, had purchased the costume to do an undercover gig. As fate would have it, he hadn’t gotten around to tossing it out yet.

  “But when you walked in, Mama told Tia Lola, ‘Here comes the sad man behind the clown face.’”

  Tyler inwardly flinched, but continued to smile. It was something he’d gotten good at doing—putting up a front. A skill he’d mastered during his year and a half in prison.

  “Do you believe everything your mama says?” he asked in a teasing voice to hide his frustration. He loved his seven siblings, but a big family came with a big price. Having them poke around in his personal business was part of that price.

  “I do.” Anna’s dark brown pigtails, tied with bright red ribbons, bounced around her face as she bobbed her head up and down. “Mama doesn’t lie. She says it’s a sin.”

  Okay, that hadn’t been the right thing to say. “I think she was just joking.”

  “She wasn’t laughing. Then Tia Lola said you were sad because you missed Lisa.”

  Tyler’s chest tightened. He didn’t miss Lisa. How could he miss someone who turned her back on him when he needed her the most? Someone who —

  “And then,” Anna continued, “Leo walked into the room and said it was probably because you picked up a bar of soap in prison.” Her tiny brows pulled in confusion at the same time Tyler’s gut pulled with fury. “I don’t understand that,, Tio. ”

  “Leo’s full of. . .” Tyler caught himself just in time.

  “Full of what?” Anna asked, a half-smile pulling at her lips.

  Tyler’s gaze shot to the piñata hanging above the tree. “Full of candy.”

  Anna snickered. “Mama said he was full of shit.”

  Tyler grinned. “Well, like you just said, your mama doesn’t lie. But . . . we all have . . . excrement in our insides.”

  “Excrement?” He could see the child figuring out the word’s meaning and filing it away in her knowledge-hungry brain. “That’s gross.”

  “I agree.” Tyler’s smile came easier.

  “Almost as gross as how babies are made,” she said.

  That little announcement came out of left field and Tyler’s jaw fell open.

  Anna stared at him with the same face she’d made at dinner a few weeks ago when her mom made her eat a bite of broccoli. “I read a book about it.”

  “What book?” he managed to ask.

  “The one mama bought me after I told her I didn’t believe the stork brought my baby brother.”

  “Oh,” he said, not sure what else to say. But his smile lingered as he th
ought about his sister dealing with her inquisitive daughter. He smiled until he saw Anna’s full-of-shit stepfather walk out of the patio door and snag a beer from one of the coolers.

  Leo Medina, his twin sister’s second husband, was a jerkwad, right up there with Anna’s deadbeat daddy. While Tyler tried to overlook his sister’s ghastly taste in husbands, ignoring Leo was hard. And for damn good reasons, too—or suspected reasons.

  “Did you and Lisa want to have a baby?” Anna asked.

  Tyler swallowed, searching for words. “We . . . we weren’t married.”

  She made another funny face. “I’m not getting married.”

  “Me either,” he told her honestly. After living with the result of his parents’ dysfunctional relationship, he’d always had reservations. Lisa had made him throw caution to the wind. Unfortunately that wind blew up a hell of a lot of heartache.

  “I liked Lisa,” Anna said. “She was pretty. She told me I was going to get to be the flower girl in her wedding. Why are you and her not getting married anymore? Is it because you think making babies is gross, too?”

  He nearly swallowed his tongue. “Lisa married someone else.”

  “Maybe if you told her you were sorry, she would get a divorce like Mama did with my daddy. Then Lisa could marry you.”

  Sorry for what? For being framed for a crime he didn’t commit? “I don’t think so.”

  “Saying you’re sorry works. It worked on Mom when Leo hit her. And she was mad.”

  Tyler felt like his blood pressure shot up a good twenty points. He hadn’t needed another reason to dislike Leo, but damn if he didn’t have one. “Leo hit your mom?”

  “Yeah, but he said he was sorry. So if you apologize to Lisa—”

  “Excuse me, Anna, but I need to . . . I have to do something.” He passed Anna her cat and gave the girl’s pigtail a teasing yank, hoping his rage didn’t show through his painted clown face.

  “Okay.” The innocence on her face was the opposite of everything Tyler felt.