Dru was very happy to see her uncle. He was exactly what the doctor ordered—an added barrier between herself and the heart-pounding, sweaty-palm feelings J.D. Carver generated in her without even trying.
Picking up the towel Tate had dropped, she wrapped it with studied casualness around her hips to cover up her butt, which she’d always regarded as too big. Being half naked in front of a fully dressed male was a tough way to feel on top of one’s form, especially when one was on the plump side and the man in question didn’t have a superfluous ounce of fat on his entire body.
She was relieved when J.D. said, “I’ll get out of your way and let you get to your dessert,” and started for shore.
But Uncle Ben put out a restraining hand when the younger man started to walk past. “Don’t run off, son. You’re invited, too.”
Dru could have groaned aloud. She racked her brain but couldn’t come up with a single snappy remark that would discourage J.D. without making herself look like an inhospitable bitch.
“Yeah, J.D.,” Tate chimed in. “You can’t miss Grandma Soph’s crème brûlée. It’s the best!”
J.D. still looked as if he planned to refuse. Dru prayed for it, tried for all she was worth to access some telekinetic powers to influence him in that direction. Then he glanced her way, and she just knew that her feelings must be on her face, for he suddenly flashed those white teeth at her in a feral grin, shrugged, and said, “Sure. Why not?”
Damn. Damn, damn, damn! She bared her own teeth back at him and insisted he precede her when he stood aside as they filed off the dock. She’d put up with his company because she had no other choice and because, her recent behavior to the contrary, she really was an adult. Double-dyed damned, though, if she’d allow him to walk behind her while she trailed puddles of water and swished her big old butt in his face as they climbed the trail up to Ben and Sophie’s house.
There were simply some places where a woman had to draw the line or seriously question her own intelligence.
On the other hand, having him go first meant she had to watch his tush flex as he climbed the short trail ahead of her. God, life was unfair sometimes. It wasn’t bad enough that his mind was small and tight—his butt had to be, too? Even all covered up, it didn’t take a genius to see it was one of those hard-as-concrete numbers with the sucked-in cheeks. She’d kill to have one half so nice.
Aunt Sophie met them at the door. “Oh, thank goodness you were available. Hello, darling,” she said to Tate, catching a flying peck on the lips before he raced past her, headed for the back of the house and the television set. “Come in, come in! J.D.! I’m so glad you’re here to help us eat the crème brûlée I made. I told Ben if I had to eat it all by myself he was a dead man.”
“Why?” J.D. asked. “Did he hold a gun to your head and force you to make it?”
Ben choked and Dru simply gaped at J.D., stunned. They’d all grown accustomed to tiptoeing around Sophie lately to avoid setting her off. Not that there was any predicting what would do so; the things one might suppose would anger her often didn’t faze her in the least, while the most innocuous remarks could send her into the red zone.
But Sophie merely laughed. “I didn’t say it was rational, dear. My uncertain temper these days is the uncharming by-product of my rampaging hormones. Or perhaps that’s failing hormones; I’ve never gotten it quite straight. In any case, killing Ben is something we want to avoid at all costs. I’m rather fond of the man, so thank you for coming.”
Then she turned to Dru. “Drucilla, you’re covered in goose bumps. Go put on something warm.”
“Drucilla?” J.D. said incredulously. “Someone actually named you Drucilla?”
Dru’s hands hit the towel tied low around her hips. “Oh, like J.D. is the name for the millennium,” she snapped back. “What does it stand for, anyway—juvenile delinquent?” She raked her gaze over him in a head-to-toe once-over. “From what I’ve heard, that would certainly be appropriate.”
“Drucilla!” Sophie stared at her as if she’d suddenly grown fangs.
The appalled wonder in her aunt’s voice recalled Dru to her manners, and to the fact that she and J.D. weren’t the only ones in the room—something she’d momentarily forgotten. She blinked. And just when the heck had they gravitated so close to each other? Suddenly aware of the heat radiating off his large body, she took a giant step back.
“I apologize,” she said grudgingly. “That was exceedingly rude. Excuse me, won’t you? I’ll just go throw on some clothes.”
She felt his gaze like hands running up and down her body. “Don’t feel you have to do so on my account,” he said, and even though his tone was perfectly respectful, she still managed to read all sorts of innuendo and suggestiveness into his words.
With a meaningless social smile, she pivoted on her bare heel. What was wrong with her? You’d think she’d just gotten out of junior high school. Closing the door of the guest room behind her, she leaned back against it for a moment. She had to quit being so damn reactionary. It wasn’t as if he were some troublesome guest who would be gone in a day or two.
Dru went to the chest of drawers where she kept a revolving supply of clothing. Maybe he’d get bored with country living and go back to the life he knew best. At least that’s what she fervently hoped as she pulled out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
She peeled off her bathing suit and stepped into the jeans, tugging them up her damp legs. Maybe, if she was very, very lucky, J.D. would grow tired of playing innkeeper and agree to have his checks sent to him. Then she could reclaim the serene life she’d built for herself and Tate.
And that’s exactly what she told her best friend later that night on the phone. After she’d put Tate to bed, she’d tried to settle down as she picked up his toys and wiped crumbs off the breakfast bar that divided the kitchen from the living area of the spacious attic apartment at the lodge. But the dormered ceilings, which usually made her feel comfily tucked in, seemed to close in on her, and not even the magnificent view of wooded hills rolling down to the valley worked its soothing magic. Tracking down the cordless phone receiver to the rag rug beneath the antique coffee table, she picked it up and punched out Char’s number.
She and Char had met on the swim float the summer before she’d moved in permanently with Ben and Sophie. Although opposites in many ways, the two girls had hit it off the moment they’d met, when Dru had seen Char doing handstands off the low board into the water and demanded to be taught how to do it. Char was her closest friend, her confidante, and her lifeline to sanity when life turned crazy. Which it’d certainly done with a vengeance today.
She poured out her concerns the moment her friend picked up.
Char’s snort carried clearly over the telephone line. “So let me get this straight. The new partner turns out to be one-hundred-proof testosterone in construction boots—a guy who in less than twelve hours has managed to get your juices flowing for the first time in it’s-been-so-long-I-can’t-even-remember—but you think if you’re lucky, he’ll go back to where he came from? Hel-lo! Wake up and smell the pheromones, Drucilla Jean. You’ve been on ice way too long as it is.”
“Hey, I like being on ice—it sure beats making a major ass of myself.” Dru walked over to the tiny window seat and tossed its brightly patterned pillows to one end in order to make room for herself. “I’m telling you, Char, I get around this guy and I don’t even recognize myself. Remember that little stoolie Sandy Heston, back in the sixth grade? The one who was forever tattling to the teacher? That was me tonight. One minute we’re all sitting around the table, and Carver’s practically licking his damn bowl—not to mention sucking up to Auntie Soph over how good the crème brûlée is.”
Okay, that wasn’t fair, but she couldn’t bear to think of the look on his face as he’d scraped his ramekin clean—as if he’d never known such a taste sensation existed. He probably hadn’t had the easiest time of it growing up, and when he’d seen everybody looking at him and simply sai
d, “This is great,” to Aunt Soph, the pinch of empathy she’d felt had scared the hell out of her.
“And?” Char demanded when the silence went on too long.
“And the next thing I know, I’m ratting him out over his complaint about the dock.” She flopped onto her back and drummed the fingers of her free hand on her stomach. “As if I hadn’t already told him exactly what the deal was.”
“That was mature.”
“Tell me about it. I looked even more adult when J.D. told them, cool as you please, that while I had explained the arrangement, he still felt there should be a sign spelling out the exact rules and regulations, with a warning that swimmers proceed at their own risk.”
“I, uh, hate to say this, cookie, but that’s not such a bad idea.”
“I know,” Dru agreed glumly. “Ben and Sophie thought it was brilliant, for legal purposes if nothing else. So naturally J.D. came off looking all grown-up and rational, while I looked like the whiny little stool pigeon I was.” Her heels hung over the edge of the window seat and she toed off her flip-flops. “It didn’t help that I wasn’t wearing any underwear.”
“Why, did he stare at your boobs or something?” Char’s sigh filtered down the line. “I wish someone would stare at mine, but some of us are more mammary-challenged than you well-endowed types.”
Dru made a rude noise. “And when we’re both sixty, yours will still be perky, while mine will probably be down around my knees. My heart bleeds for you.”
“Did he stare at ’em?”
“No, it wasn’t that. I doubt he even noticed. It was more—I don’t know—he was so together, and my hair was wet, my boobs kept shifting back and forth every time I breathed, and my big butt was spread out all over the chair.”
“Stop that. I should be so lucky as to have enough boob to shift, and your butt is not big.”
“Well, it sure felt that way without my undies. I felt vulnerable, okay? Kind of an awake version of that caught-naked-in-public dream. I could have used the armor of my silkies and a blow-dryer.”
“I understand that. For me, it’s lipstick. Give me a tube of Estée Lauder, and I can face just about anything. But what about him? What kind of underwear do you suppose he wears? Tightie-whities or boxers?”
“My guess would be none.”
“Oooh,” Char breathed. “Ya think?”
“If his attitude is anything to go by. He acts like such a swinging dick, you’d think he has to kick it out of his way with every step he takes.”
“Damn. But, Drusie, if you don’t think he was wearing any underwear, either, shouldn’t that have you feeling less uncomfortable?”
“No, it’s that attitude thing again. I felt big and blowzy. He was probably busy congratulating himself on what a big one he has.”
“I have got to meet this guy. You think he might need a massage?”
“His ego sure as hell doesn’t. But I imagine you’re talking about a real massage, right?” Which Char provided at the lodge four days a week.
Char’s voice sounded wistful. “It’d sure be nice to deal with some real muscle for a change. All I’ve gotten lately is soft tourist bodies.”
“Well, hey, who knows? He’d probably eat it up with a spoon, the way he did the crème brûlée, so if you wanna take a run at him, be my guest.”
“You know better than that, Dru.”
Dru stared at the receiver with blank surprise. She and Char had made a pact back in junior high school never to horn in on the other’s relationship with a guy—and panic bloomed that her best friend thought that was what J.D. had the potential to be. “It’s not like that!”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s not, Char. I don’t even like him.”
“Yeah, that must be why your heart pounds every time he’s around, huh? Dislike.”
“Dammit, Char,” she began in exasperation, but a sleepy voice interrupted her.
“Mom?”
She sat up, peering around at Tate, who stood ruffle-haired in the doorway. “Hey, baby, what are you doing up?”
“Gotta go?” Char inquired. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Dru turned off the phone and, getting up, set it back in its stand on the end table. “Can’t sleep?”
“I hadda pee.” A huge yawn escaped him. “Then I heard you talkin’. I thought someone was here.”
“I was just talking to Char.”
Tate nodded and yawned again.
“You ready to go back to bed?”
“Uh-huh.” He shuffled in front of her down the short hallway to his room. A moment later he climbed onto the mattress and flopped down on his back. He immediately rolled onto his side.
Dru pulled the blankets up around his shoulders and leaned down to give him a kiss. “’Night, sweet pea. Luva-luva you.”
“Love you, too, Mom,” Tate murmured. Before Dru had straightened, he was once again sound asleep.
Leaving his door open a crack, she went back into the living room. She flipped on the television to a Seattle channel for the news, but after hearing about an oil spill in the straits, the mutilation of a horse in Arlington, and the death of a cashier who had been shot during a convenience-store robbery last Tuesday, she snapped it off again.
She had problems of her own. Hearing those cheery little tidbits didn’t help.
5
Butch hung up the phone receiver and threw himself back on the couch. Taking a pull from the beer bottle in his hand, he thunked his feet on the coffee table. Gina always went ballistic when he did that, but she wasn’t home to see him, so what the hell.
Where the fuck was J.D.? The man Butch had shot in that farcical robbery last Tuesday had died yesterday, and his alibi was out doing God knew what, God knew where.
Dammit, how was it possible for everything to turn to shit so freaking fast? It wasn’t like he’d meant to shoot the guy or anything—that old pistol had been in his glove box for years, stuffed under wads of fast-food-joint napkins. It was the last remaining link to his wild-child years, and he’d kept it around not because he’d ever expected to use it, but for the protection it represented.
He hadn’t set out to knock over the convenience store, either. He’d just been so damn tired of being broke and having to listen to Gina rag on and on about what a deadbeat he was these days, and why the hell wasn’t he out there beating the pavement looking for work now that Lankovich, that crook, had closed his doors. So sheer impulse had made him dig the gun out of the glove compartment when he’d stopped at the store for a six-pack. Damned if he was going to beg his old lady for beer money again.
He hadn’t intended to actually use the gun, but the idiot behind the counter just had to play hero. It was his own damn fault Butch had to shoot him; anyone with half a brain knew you were supposed to just hand over the money. But nooo, he’d argued about it in his lousy English; then he’d reached under the counter. Hell, how was Butch supposed to know a gun hadn’t been under there? That’s what anyone would have thought—and there was no way in hell he was gonna let some minimum-wage-earning towelhead get the drop on him.
Even so, he hadn’t meant to squeeze off a round. But Jesus, not one frigging thing had gone the way it was supposed to go that afternoon, and his finger had simply convulsed with nervous tension against the trigger. The next thing he’d known, the guy was spinning backward and collapsing against the shelves of cigarettes behind him. And there’d been blood—great fucking amounts of bright red blood—all over the damn place.
Now he had to do something about J.D., before J.D. heard about it and got it into his head to do something irretrievably stupid. The more Butch thought about it, in fact, the more he realized that whatever he ended up doing would have to be permanent.
Shit. It gave him a headache just thinking about it. They’d been buds forever, him and J.D., and he liked him; he really did. But J.D. had always had that inconvenient moral streak running through him. Butch laid the blame for it on the old broad who’d taken him in that one y
ear. But the bottom line was that J.D. would never understand about what he’d done.
He knew exactly what would happen: the minute J.D. caught wind of the store clerk’s death, either he’d expect Butch to come clean about Kittie so the cops could talk to her and clear his name once and for all, or he’d double- and triple-check her story himself. And Kittie wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the marquee. If J.D. grilled her hard enough, Butch wasn’t sure he could trust her not to fold right in the middle of the story he’d fed her.
And hell, if it came down to a choice between friendship or twenty-to-life in Walla Walla, there was no fucking contest. He was real sorry about it, but that was just the way it went. And he wasn’t about to sit around twiddling his thumbs until he was taken by surprise, either. Especially after that phone call—he’d almost crapped when J.D. phoned practically on top of his hearing about the store clerk. He’d tried to trace the call, but that had gotten screwed up too. Just when he was about to hit *69, Gina had rung up to let him know she was catching a drink with a friend after work.
Sometimes life just sucked.
He knew J.D. too well. The man was a frigging pit bull when he wanted information. Much better to make a preemptive strike against him than wait around for J.D. to get wind of this new development and “help” his ass right into the slammer.
Trouble was, he didn’t know where his old buddy had gotten himself off to. The temporary job he’d taken was finished; chances were he’d picked up work out of town. Or maybe he’d just moved across town and Butch would run into him down at the union hall.
But he wasn’t gonna sit around on his ass counting on that. He climbed to his feet and hunted down his car keys. It was time he put out a few feelers and found out who the hell knew where J.D. was.
J.D. stood barefoot on the dew-dampened front porch, scraping crème brûlée off the oval sides and bottom of the white ribbed custard dish Sophie had sent home with him last night. He licked the last of the dessert off his spoon. Damn, this stuff was good. With a regretful look at the empty container, he walked back into the cabin, held the dish under a running tap, and scrubbed it clean. He knocked back the last of his coffee and rinsed that cup out as well. A moment later he brushed his teeth, then finished dressing and let himself out of his cabin.
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