“Wait, wait. Adding Beth to the mix would bring the mistress count to four, plus one wife. Even you couldn’t juggle all of that, Casanova.”
Blake pretends to be offended. “Mine weren’t all at the same time. Besides, I’m in the process of cleaning up my act.”
Interesting. There’s generally only one reason a man cleans up his act. Should I even dare to wonder if it could be because of his feelings for me? Since I don’t know if there’s even a chance in hell of that, he’s not getting off the hook with me right now.
“No you’re not,” I argue. “You admitted to inventing an excuse for spending all of your time with me, yet you’re still stringing Sarah along on the side.”
“I’m not stringing her along.”
“You had dinner with her tonight—and last night. Remind me how that’s not dating.”
“She barely spoke to me. She was too busy hosting the party.”
“What about Bethany? You haven’t exactly cut her loose either.”
He says unconvincingly, “She hasn’t called me all night. Maybe she’s over me.”
“The woman tossed a drink on me tonight to get you alone with her. I don’t think I’d assume she’s over you.” Blake looks like he’s hiding something. A thought crosses my mind. “Wait a second. Let me see your phone.”
“No.” Oh, yeah, he’s hiding something. I bet he turned his ringer off and isn’t answering his myriad of calls. I reach down and try to pluck his cell phone out of his pocket, but he catches my hand. I hold my other hand up. “Fine. I surrender.” Not. He is never going to know what hit him.
Blake lets go of me, and I allow my robe to fall slightly off one shoulder as I slide my arms around his waist and smile up innocently at him. “Blake, why did you say before that you were cleaning up your act?”
His eyes dart to my bare shoulder for a moment. He returns my embrace, looking down at me and smiling. “You’ll see.”
Quick as a flash of lightening, I shove my hand in his pocket and retrieve his phone. Before he realizes what I’ve done, I drop down and wiggle out of his arms, racing to my bedroom before he can stop me, slamming the door in his face.
“Sucka!” I taunt from behind the door. I notice his phone is on silent mode, just like I expected. Now to snoop through his call list.
“No fair using your body as a weapon.” Blake is not used to getting bested.
“Oh, if I used my body as a weapon, you wouldn’t be able to move for a week,” I reply seductively.
“And I want you to know I am fine with that,” Blake’s voice calls from the other side of the door.
I check his recent calls. Bethany McCool is the latest call on the list, and it shows she has called eight times (eight times?!?) in the past few hours. Sarah has called twice. I knew it! I bet work is going to be very interesting for me on Monday, considering Sarah had to have known I was dancing with Blake tonight (thanks to the whole Bethany scene). Then we probably caused a commotion by racing out of the party together, all topped off by Blake not accepting both Sarah and Bethany’s calls the rest of the night. Bethany has to be in a frenzy by now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t start making trouble for me at work. It will be a miracle if I still have my job by this time next week. I open my bedroom door to find Blake still standing there, leaning against the wall tiredly.
I hand his cell phone back to him. “Here.”
“How many calls are they up to now?” he asks dejectedly.
“Ten. So why hide it from me?”
“Because…” He lets out a big sigh. “We were having a fun evening, and I didn’t want to spoil it like last time.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “You call getting questioned by the police a ‘fun evening’?”
“Every evening is a fun evening when I’m with you,” he admits sweetly, taking my hand. “You look tired. Get some rest. See you in the morning.” He kisses my hand and disappears back into my living room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I awaken to the smell of bacon frying. I take a long, deep breath. Ooh, and there’s the aroma of brewing coffee, too. Yum! I hear a quiet knock at my door.
“Come in,” I call.
Blake pokes his head in the door and smiles. “Get up, sleepyhead. Breakfast is ready.”
I am floored. No man has ever made breakfast for me before, especially after an excruciatingly platonic non-date the night before. I simply can’t wrap my mind around it.
“You made me breakfast?”
“Yes,” he says, letting himself into my room and approaching my bed. “You sound confused.”
He looks completely adorable right now. I’ve never seen him not looking sharp and perfect, even the morning after we fell asleep watching our surveillance video at his place. This morning, however, his hair is disheveled from sleeping on my couch, his shirt is untucked and rumpled, and he’s got the sexiest stubble going on that I’ve ever seen in my life. And, he’s… IN. MY. BEDROOM!
I pat the bed beside me, not knowing what I would actually have the guts to do with him if I got him into my bed. (I know what I’ve fantasized about doing.) He comes over and sits down. Oh, boy. My stomach is full of butterflies, but he doesn’t need to know that. I need to be calm and not come off sounding like some lovesick teenager, which is exactly what I feel like right now.
I say slowly and softly, making sure my voice isn’t quaking, “I’m not confused, I’m impressed.” I reach over and take his face in both my hands. “Thank you,” I whisper, pulling him toward me and kissing him softly on the lips.
He smirks at me. “My, we’re horny in the morning, aren’t we?”
Mortified, I flop back down onto the bed and cover my face with my pillow. I need a snappy comeback here, but nothing is coming to me—where’s Becca when I need her? Suddenly, I feel the covers being yanked off of me. Maybe he has changed his mind and plans to ravish me after all.
I peek around my pillow to find Blake standing beside my bed, still smirking. “Get up. Your breakfast is getting cold.” Damn. No ravishing today.
Fortunately, I happened to think of a snappy comeback while I had my head buried in my pillow. “You’re lucky I was wearing pajamas today,” I sass as I crawl out of bed.
As soon as Blake is out of my room, I quickly change into some regular clothes and head into the kitchen.
“You changed?” Blake says, clearly disappointed.
“I thought it would be too distracting for you, having to sit across the breakfast table from a horny lady in nothing but her nightie,” I retort.
Blake smiles broadly. “You know me so well. Here, sit.”
He pulls a chair out and seats me at his nicely set table. A heaping plate of waffles and bacon is before me, next to a huge mug of steaming coffee. I’m still in a state of disbelief that he went to all this trouble, plus he did it all without even waking me up to ask where I keep my waffle iron.
“Now hang on, I thought you couldn’t cook—you said pizza was your specialty,” I say, confused.
“I never said I couldn’t cook. I just choose not to. There’s not a lot of point cooking for one, am I right?”
“Yeah, unfortunately not,” I agree, taking a bite of waffle. It’s delicious. “Yummy breakfast. Thanks.”
“It’s the least I could do after all the trouble I’ve gotten you into this week.”
“You’re right, you do owe me.”
“So what do you want to do today?”
I take a gulp of coffee. “Nothing. I’m tired. Can you imagine why?”
“I thought maybe later we could go snooping around at Beth Campbell’s. You up for it, Nancy Drew?”
“Aren’t the police going to talk to her today? The way I see it, this is their problem now.”
His face falls. “Come on, Hart, just one more? Please?”
I glance up to find him making some seriously sad puppy dog eyes at me. I laugh. “Fine. I’ll go. Just don’t ever look at me like that again, okay?”
“Y
ou got it. Now—” Blake is interrupted by his cell phone ringing.
“Your girlfriends are up early this morning,” I remark, not looking up from my breakfast.
“You’re hilarious,” he says sarcastically. “Actually, it’s the nursing home. Excuse me.” He gets up from the table and hurries into my living room. I can’t hear much of the conversation, but he sounds concerned, and he strides back into the kitchen saying, “I’m on my way.” He turns to me and explains, “That was one of the nurses. My grandfather is not doing well and is asking for me. I need to go. Do you want to come along?”
“No, you go on. Your grandfather doesn’t need me hanging around if he’s not feeling well.”
“I don’t want to leave you by yourself.”
“I’ll be fine. Besides, I’m not leaving my breakfast. Now go.” I get up and shoo him out the door.
He turns around as he’s walking to his car and calls, “Lock your door.”
“Quit worrying,” I yell back.
I close my door and lock it, as instructed, and return to my breakfast. I hope Blake’s grandfather is all right. I learned with my grannie that it’s never good when the nursing home calls you and asks you to come there. After all that’s happened, I hate it that Blake has one more thing on his plate to deal with. I finish my breakfast and clear the table. He certainly didn’t leave a mess for me—he cleaned up as he was cooking. Blake is definitely a keeper, if he would just give in and allow us to be together.
Just as I’m putting away the last dish, my doorbell rings. I hurry to answer it.
Assuming it’s Blake, I ask, “Did you forget something?” as I’m opening the door. Only it’s not Blake. Sarah of all people is standing outside, and her expression is unreadable. I can’t imagine why she has showed up at my house.
“Sarah. Hi. What…um, why…” I trail off.
Sarah says in her office professional tone, “Good morning, Lizzie. Can we talk?”
“Um…sure. Come on in.”
What is she doing here this morning? Surely if Sarah were going to give me another lecture, she would do it at work—not at my home. Or, maybe she’s looking for Blake. If she figures out he stayed here last night, it won’t make for very pleasant conversation between us. I scan my living room and kitchen, seeing no signs that point to me having any overnight visitors. It’s a good thing I finished putting away the breakfast stuff before she got here. Had she arrived five minutes sooner, she might have started questioning me about the extra place setting.
Sarah enters my living room and glances around as if inspecting the place. She’s beginning to make me a little nervous, mostly due to me not knowing how to read her very well.
I decide to get the impending pain over with. “So, Sarah, what can I do for you?”
She turns on a smile, but something in her eyes tells me she’s not happy about what she’s going to say. I assume that must mean she’s not going to ream me a new one right now, otherwise, I think she’d be jumping up and down. “Lizzie, I’m sorry about what Bethany did to your dress. I have dealt with her behavior, and I came over to see if I could take your dress and get it cleaned for you.”
Whew! I thought I was going to get into some kind of trouble for my feud with Bethany, or at least for dragging Blake away from Sarah last night. “Oh…that’s…very nice of you, Sarah. I let it soak overnight hoping the stain would come out. Let me run and get it. Wait here. I have to run downstairs.”
As I’m turning to head down the hallway, Sarah muses softly, “I thought this old house might have a basement.”
I stop and look at her questioningly. What an oddly random thing to say. Laughing nervously, I joke, “Yeah, and it’s really old and gross, so please don’t look down there. It’s embarrassing.”
I continue down the hall and open my basement door, stopping to switch on the light before I begin my descent. The phone rings, but before I can turn around and head back to the kitchen to answer it, I feel Sarah directly behind me, literally breathing down my neck. My hand still on the light switch, I turn my head to find her crazy eyes staring back at me. Uh-oh.
Before I can decide how I should play the situation, Sarah pushes me, hard, with both hands. My head and upper body jerk forward, causing my knees to buckle. I have no choice but to step forward with my right foot to regain my balance. The unfortunate part about that is I’m standing at the top of the stairs and there’s nowhere to put my right foot. I scramble for the handrail as my foot finally makes contact, but to my dismay the contact is with the third step down, and I land on the side of my foot, twisting my ankle around and SNAP! Never having broken a bone before, I didn’t know you could actually hear the sound of it breaking, but it turns out you can. A shot of pain scorches through my leg all the way to my knee, but I have more pressing matters to attend to—it seems I’m still falling…backwards now. I didn’t ever get a good hold on the handrail, and as I’m descending, my hands are clawing the air, reaching out for anything I might grasp to keep me from—CRASH! My left shoulder and arm land first, about halfway down the stairs. My head rockets back, smashing into the balusters lining the stairway. The pain in my head is immeasurable, making my shoulder and ankle feel good by comparison. My eyes involuntarily close, and when I try to open them all I can see is bright, psychedelic flashes of light surrounded by darkness. This nightmare isn’t even close to being over, because my body is still in motion. Finally, I feel my torso and legs crash down onto the stairs, and my entire body begins a slow slide. Bump, bump, bump is the sickening sound of my limp, broken body rolling down the remainder of the stairs and onto the floor below.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I’m dead. Seriously. I have to be. That’s the only plausible explanation for the odd combination of terrifying out-of-body experience and devastating pain I’m suffering through right now. I feel cold and achy all over. My head is pounding. My thoughts are jumbled and slow. I try to muster the strength to open my eyes to see where exactly I am. It smells like my basement in here, all wet and musty. But how could I be in my basement when I was just upstairs? As I gingerly open one eyelid, I see that I am in fact in my basement, but I’m looking at it from an unfamiliar angle. What am I doing on my basement floor? Yuck! All of my thoughts shift to the foul combination of biohazard and ick that’s been collecting on this floor for decades, and I decide my new number one priority is to get up immediately.
As I try to move around and push myself up, a shooting, scorching pain runs through my left shoulder and a stabbing sensation engulfs my chest. A wave of nausea hits me from the pain, and I’m face down again on my grimy, dirty basement floor. Holy crap—is that a puddle of blood next to my head? Okay, don’t panic, Lizzie. Since my upper body doesn’t seem to want to cooperate, let’s try my legs. I’ll just try to turn over, and then maybe I can sit up. Bad idea. I manage to get turned over but now my ankles, neck, and backside are all angry and throbbing. I seem to be pretty busted up. Trying to take a quick inventory of my symptoms, I decide it’s easier to make a mental list of what doesn’t hurt. That would be my left ear and my right pinky finger. The only good news is that the fog in my brain seems to be clearing a bit, and I’m beginning to remember how I got down here. The pressure on my back, the loss of my balance at the top of the stairs, the relief of getting a partial foothold on the stairs only to hear my ankle snap, then the free fall—all of which wasn’t too terribly painful, as I hazily recall. But then, as another wave of nausea hits me square in the gut, I relive the second half of my descent… My arms reaching out, desperately clawing to get a grip on something (anything!). The first contact between my rickety old basement stairs and my left arm and shoulder. My neck jerking back, slamming my head into the balusters. The rolling, bumping, and sliding down those slippery stairs, with nothing to break my fall at the bottom except cold, hard concrete.
I can see my assailant’s silhouette coming down the stairs, and my blood starts to run even colder. I look up and croak, “What did I ever do to you?
”
“You’re standing in my way, Lizzie,” Sarah states matter-of-factly, as she steps disdainfully over me. “Blake wastes entirely too much of his time on you, so I’m going to correct that little problem. Then, after I get done comforting him over his loss, he’ll have all of his time to devote to me and my master plan.” She glares down at me menacingly. “Your ankle looks terrible. Does this hurt?” She kicks me swiftly, square on my broken ankle.
I scream in pain. My whole body convulses, nausea threatening to take over at any moment. The last thing I want to do is puke right now—I’m flat on my back, and if I happen to vomit I won’t be able to turn my head fast enough to keep from drowning in it. Plus, I’ve already got blood and grime from the floor on my hair and face, and I seriously don’t want to add chunks to that.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Sarah strolling over toward my grandfather’s workbench. She seems to be perusing the tools, opening up a drawer here and there.
“What are you doing?” I demand. Ouch. It shouldn’t hurt in my chest when I speak. That’s not a good sign. Even my voice sounds like it’s been injured—it’s so weak and breathy.
“I’m finding the perfect—oh, these will do nicely. What do you think?” She turns around, holding up the same jagged-toothed hacksaw Blake was making fun of last night. In her other hand, she has what I know to be one of my grandfather’s old woodworking tools, which in reality just looks like a big rusty ice pick. Surely she’s not going to actually use those on me. Maybe she’ll just threaten me with them and call it good enough.
“Sarah,” I begin, my voice shaking, “I’ll do whatever you want. You don’t need to…” I trail off as she slowly stalks toward me.
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