“Sure,” she breathed, still taking in the landscaping. Not only was there a big wooden deck, there was a Jacuzzi set into a little gazebo, a rock path that wound through a garden and…whatever he was working on in the back corner. She squinted toward the giant pile of dirt and rocks, trying to figure out what it might be.
“Here,” Jamie said, gesturing with a cup of steaming coffee. “Sit down.”
She took in the brand-new planks of the deck under her feet, then lowered herself into a red Adirondack chair.
“Sugar and milk,” Jamie murmured as he handed her the mug.
“Thanks. What are you making back there?”
Staring toward the pile of dirt, he sipped from his coffee. “Water feature.”
“What does that mean?”
He sighed and cut a sideways look at her. “A waterfall.”
Tessa’s coffee went down the wrong pipe, and she coughed and hacked until her eyes teared up. “A waterfall?” she finally gasped.
“Just a little one. And a lily pond.”
“That’s…” She searched for a word. Uncharacteristic? Unexpected? Bizarre? “Great,” she finally finished.
He rolled his eyes. “With the yard split down the middle, it’s long and narrow. I wanted it to lead to something instead of just looking like half of a lawn.”
“Okay, but…since when do you do landscaping?”
“I bought some books,” he muttered.
Tessa reached past the space between the two chairs to take his hand. “It looks like something out of a magazine, Jamie. It’s amazing.”
“Thanks.”
“Is that an apple tree?”
Jamie cleared his throat. “Why’d you stop by?”
“I just wanted to see you.”
He let it rest at that, and they sat and drank their coffee in silence, watching a flock of blackbirds pick through the garden. And then Jamie ruined it.
“So you’re determined to screw around with Luke, huh?”
She huffed and shot him an exasperated look. “Yeah, I’m pretty determined.”
“If you want to explore your wild side, I guess you’ve got a right to that—”
“You guess?”
“—but can’t you find someone else to do it with?”
Tessa opened her mouth, tempted to channel the screechy outrage of a teenage girl with a brutal crush. But a split second before her tirade spilled out, she saw Jamie’s face. Really saw him. And he didn’t look arrogant or high-handed. He looked miserable. Tense with worry…over her. Her anger cooled so quickly that she shivered.
“He tried to walk away, you know,” she said softly. “When you told him I was a virgin, he tried to end it. He’s not a heartless user. He’s a nice guy.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I don’t need to be sure. I’m not marrying him. We’re just dating. I’m not a kid anymore. If I’m going to make mistakes, let me make them.”
Jamie laughed. “You’re seriously telling me that? Fine. I agree. We’re too old to sneak around and cover shit up. We’ve got to make our own mistakes.”
“I meant in our personal lives!”
“I know what you meant, but you’re wrong. I’m not hiding anything anymore. Eric’s not going to ground us. He’s not going to cut off our allowance. Hell, he can’t even fire us.”
“He can leave,” she snapped.
Jamie pulled his chin in. “What?”
“He’s put in his time. He did what he had to do. But he doesn’t need us or the brewery.”
“Tessa.” He huffed out a startled laugh. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” she answered, surging to her feet. “Thanks for the coffee.” She set the empty mug down on the deck and rushed away.
“Hey,” Jamie called. He stood just as she hit the gate and pushed through.
“I’ll see you tonight!” she shouted, speeding up to a jog.
“Tessa!” he called, but she kept on going. It was ridiculous to talk about this stuff. What was the point of that? Talking wouldn’t keep anybody close. Maybe Luke was perfect for her. He didn’t want to talk about anything, either.
Strangely, that thought actually cheered her up as she rushed down the street. He seemed to take her for who she was, in all her craziness. And she was determined to show him the same courtesy regarding his. Tessa dialed his number and slowed to a walk.
“Good morning, Detective,” she said when he answered. “Did you miss me last night?” She’d missed him, but she’d felt too vulnerable spending four nights in a row with him.
“Oh, I missed something.”
Tessa snorted. “Dirty.”
“Speaking of dirty, are you coming over tonight?”
“Actually, I’m busy tonight. That’s why I called.”
“Are you trying to confuse me?”
She grinned. “Maybe. I’ve got a kickball game tonight, and I wondered if you’d like to come watch.”
“Pardon me?” His voice suggested she’d gone mad.
“The brewery has a team. Tonight’s our first game of the season. Do you want to come watch me kickball some ass?”
“Did you just say ‘kickball some ass’?”
“What? It’s the lingo.”
“Okay, I’m going to go ahead and say yes before you scare me away. But what about your brothers?”
Crap, she hadn’t even thought about her brothers, which was ridiculous. They were a quarter of the team. “Well, Eric has agreed to stand down, though I’m not sure he’ll ask you to join the team. As for Jamie…hopefully he’ll be okay as long as we don’t dry hump in the outfield.”
“Um. Yeah. I think I can manage to avoid that.”
“Deal. I’ll see you there. It’s at six-thirty. The baseball field two blocks past the brewery.”
WHEN LUKE GOT to the baseball field he realized his mistake. He shouldn’t have promised not to dry hump her in the field before seeing her outfit. Tessa looked like his junior high wet dream.
She wore tube socks that ended just below her knees, then it was a long stretch of smooth, golden thigh right up to her nylon gym shorts. Above that, she wore a tight T-shirt with the brewery logo emblazoned across her chest in eye-catching red. Or maybe the color wasn’t eye-catching, but the canvas beneath it. Of course, she’d topped it all off with a high ponytail that glinted gold and bronze in the late-afternoon sunlight.
Luke’s chest ached every time his heart beat, and he sat down quickly in the bleachers before her brothers could see how he was ogling her. What the hell were they thinking letting her wear something like that, anyway? He glanced around at the other people in the stands, expecting to see men taking pictures on their phones and posting them to the internet. But the vast majority of the spectators were women. Which made sense, he supposed. There was only one other girl on the team. He recognized her as a server from the fingerprinting they’d done. Otherwise, the rest of the team seemed to be Jamie, Eric, Wallace and the young dishwasher. Eric looked unhappy to be there, but Jamie seemed to be having a good time chatting up two gorgeous women who jiggled a lot when they got excited. But Luke’s eyes barely skimmed over them. Tessa was stretching her hamstrings, after all. He had to memorize this for later playback.
When she looked up and saw him, her face caught the sun and her mouth broke into a smile that hit him in the gut. He was starting to get used to it, or at least he accepted the wave of panic that swept over him. Ignoring the daggers Eric’s eyes were throwing his way, Luke beamed back at her, then watched every single bounce of her body when she turned and jogged toward the outfield.
The game was on. Luke had no idea what happened as the innings progressed. All he knew was that Tessa jogged closer, and then jogged far away again. Sometimes she jumped up and down at home base a few times. Sometimes she kicked the ball. Luke watched, not thinking about any of his open cases even once. He simply felt the warm sun and the cool breeze and watched Tessa have a great time in her indecently wholesome out
fit. It was the best time he’d had in years.
Scratch that. It was the best time he’d had in public in years. Of course, the private times were now covered by Tessa, too. And Christ, he couldn’t wait to get her someplace private tonight. He prayed to God everybody wasn’t going out for drinks and pizza afterward. Luke would go mad if he had to sit next to her thighs at a table with her family.
“Stop staring at my sister that way,” a voice said from right beside him.
Luke jumped and reached a hand toward the spot where his gun normally lay. “Jesus,” he cursed as he spun toward Eric. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“I’m up last,” Eric said, gesturing toward the line at home plate.
Luke hadn’t registered anything except the fact that Tessa was only fifteen feet away and she was at the back of the line, providing a fantastic view. “Sorry,” he muttered, not even bothering to deny his ogling.
“You’d better not be lying to her.”
“I’m not.”
“If you are, cop or not, I’ll find a way to make you miserable.”
“Understood.” Luke wasn’t going to argue with the man. Eric had every right to worry about Tessa. She looked vulnerable as a fucking lamb out there. “I promise that what you’ve heard about me isn’t true. None of it.”
Eric surprised him by saying, “All right. I’ll accept that. Until I have a reason not to. I don’t want her hiding things from me, so let’s call a truce.”
Though he nearly choked on his tongue at Eric’s words, Luke reached out and shook his hand. Tessa, not hiding things? That’d be the day.
Eric bounded down the bleachers to rejoin his team, and Jamie glared at both his brother and Luke. Strange to think his old friend could still be so pissed, but maybe it made sense. Luke hadn’t been an angel in college, and Jamie knew that.
As Tessa moved up to base and waited for the kickball pitch, Luke’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, keeping his eye on the play. “Asher,” he said.
“Asher, it’s Ben Jackson down in Denver. You in the middle of something?”
Tessa connected with the ball and raced for first, but she was tagged out before she got there. “Nope,” Luke said as he stepped down to the ground and circled behind the bleachers. “What’s up?”
“I’m pulling a slow weekend shift, so I checked into the records for you. It’s strange. Those interviews are definitely missing. I called the investigating detective—he’s over in violent crimes now. I figured the case was still fresh, but he claims not to remember anything about the interviews. Says they must have been nothing, since it didn’t lead to anything else.”
“You sound doubtful.”
“Hell, man. I don’t know. They’re just robberies. I can’t imagine anyone would put effort into a department-wide cover-up. Think about how many people it would’ve taken.”
“Could it have been the detective on his own? Maybe a nephew or cousin was involved.”
“I could try to track down his partner, if you want.” But Ben sounded more than a little reluctant. “He’s not the one who signed the reports, though.”
Luke shrugged. “I’m sure it’s nothing. And thanks.”
“All right. Call me if you think of anything else.”
When he circled the bleachers, he almost ran straight into Tessa as she stepped around. “Oh, hey!” she said. “Important phone call? Big murder investigation?”
“You’re not supposed to look so hopeful.”
“Oh, sorry. Right.” But she still looked up at him with bright eyes.
“No, it’s not a big murder investigation.” He let his eyes dip. “By the way, you look…”
She flexed her biceps and posed. “Sporty?”
“No, that wasn’t what I was going to say.”
She tried on a tough look. “Kick-ass?”
Luke slowly leaned close and set his lips against her earlobe. “Please tell me you’re wearing plain white panties, because that would really complete this fantasy for me.”
Tessa yelped with laughter, then pressed a hand to her mouth. “What?”
“You look like every cute girl I ever fantasized about in my ninth-grade gym class.”
“Ooooh…” She pulled back to raise an eyebrow at him. “Well, well, well, Detective. You do have a filthy side, after all. What is it you imagined these girls doing?”
“Aw, hell, Tessa. I was in ninth grade. By the time I got to the part where I imagined a girl without panties on, it was all over.”
Grinning, she took a step closer and put her own mouth to his ear. “So you just need me to lie there and let you slide my panties down? That’s all?”
“Honestly? I’m ashamed to say that just might do it.”
“Really?” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Let’s find out, then.”
Luke was wearing a Cheshire grin when he looked up. Unfortunately, his self-satisfied smile was aimed right in Jamie’s direction before Luke could wipe it from his face. He stiffened.
“Oh, God,” Tessa breathed. “Is one of my brothers standing behind me?”
“Yeah.”
“Balls,” she muttered.
Luke jumped back and pointed at her. “You did say ‘balls’ that day!”
“What?”
“Never mind,” he said before spinning her around to face Jamie. “Great game, man,” he offered feebly.
Jamie glared at him before looking at Tessa. “I’m off tomorrow. Chester’s coming in to cover me. Call me if there’s any problem with that. Or anything else.”
“Sure,” Tessa said. “I will.”
He frowned at her as if he was waiting for something else. “Or come by my place and talk if you want.”
She nodded, and Jamie turned and walked away without another glance at Luke. Tessa stared after him.
“I’m sorry,” Luke whispered. “I don’t want to cause any trouble between you.”
“No, it’s lots of things. Thirteen years’ worth, I think.” A deep breath raised her shoulders up, but when she turned to him, she was smiling again. “Come to my place. I’ll make you dinner. I’m actually a pretty good cook. And then…maybe I’ll let you get to second base.”
“Oh, yeah? Maybe I can steal third.”
Her smile said she had a better idea. “How about sliding into home?”
Luke groaned at the joke and told her she wasn’t funny, but he was secretly giddy as a damn schoolgirl. And falling even faster than before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TESSA THOUGHT SHE’D found a way around the problem of the contract. If she wrote up a second contract agreeing to cover the cost of each shipment of Donovan Brothers beer to High West Air for the next six months, Roland Kendall could simply sign the contract that Eric had already had drawn up. That would be the contract her brothers would see.
The only problem with this plan was that Tessa would feel like a scheming, underhanded crook of a sister who’d pulled multiple people into the deception of her family. But she’d already done that, hadn’t she? She’d already let half a dozen people know that she was willing to go behind Eric’s back to advance her cause.
Well, she’d be the bad guy if she had to be.
Tessa called up the brewery’s lawyer and asked if she could put him on retainer for herself personally. It was the only way to keep him from blabbing to Eric.
“Tessa,” he said when she finally told him what she wanted drawn up. “What the heck are you doing here?”
“I’ve made an arrangement to keep the deal alive. That’s all.”
“But this is… You’ll be personally liable for this. I can’t allow that.”
“Come on, Richard. You’re my lawyer, not my boss. Write it up with some safeguards and limits, all right? You have the estimates we worked out with High West, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Protect me from ruin, then, but I know what I’m doing.”
“You have the money to cover this?”
“I do as
long as you can find a way to limit it to around thirty thousand. I don’t want to lose the house.”
He sighed in a way that told her Richard was also an older brother. “And I assume Eric and Jamie have no idea you’re doing this?”
“I’ll counter that with a question. Do I know everything that Eric does?” He didn’t answer. She’d known he wouldn’t. “When can you get this to me?”
“Wednesday,” he said gruffly. He wanted to say no—she could feel that coming through the phone like the pull of gravity—but he likely didn’t want to take the chance she’d go to another attorney and do it badly. Richard was a nice guy—compared to anyone, not just other lawyers. She’d have to buy him a beer when this was over.
“Eric!” she called when she got off the phone. He didn’t answer, so she walked to his office and knocked on the half-closed door. He waved her in as he finished up a phone call and hung up.
“I just talked to Monica Kendall!” she said.
“Are you two friends now?”
Oh, God, no, she wanted to groan, but she ignored the question. “She said Roland still intends to go forward with the deal. Has he called you yet?”
“No.” He looked doubtful. “I don’t know, Tessa. I heard through the grapevine that he was talking to a competitor in Denver. I’m beginning to think something isn’t right.”
“I’m sure it’s fine. She said he hasn’t signed the contract yet, but he intends to. Maybe he was just doing some last-minute comparisons.”
“It’s beer, not a defense contract.” He frowned and leaned back in his chair. “If this doesn’t go through, I’m going to have to revamp our marketing strategy for the next two years. I’ve worked everything around this.”
She nodded frantically. “I know. But let’s wait and see. I’ve got a good feeling.” He shot her a doubtful look. Tessa shifted, her heart pattering with nervousness.
“Well, hopefully he’ll deign to call me before I head to Santa Fe.”
“Oh, is Santa Fe this week?”
“I leave Friday.”
For a moment, she’d hoped Eric would be leaving for the microbrewery festival earlier in the week. That would give her another whole week to make sure everything was perfect. But this was for the best. She needed to get this over with.
Good Girls Don't Page 19