He’d liked her. Yesterday. This morning, he seemed like he wanted to yell at her, or possibly arrest her. What was it to him if she switched places with Lily? Was he the agent-in-charge of the FBI’s Anti-Deception Squad? No. Which made it none of his damn business.
He toed off his own shoes without setting down the pans he was carrying and said, “I can leave Tobias outside, if you’d rather.” The words were polite, but the blue eyes were hard, and the mouth she may possibly have imagined coming down over hers was grim.
“He can come inside,” she said. “I like dogs, and Ridgebacks are one of my favorites.” She put a hand out to the dog—Tobias—and he sniffed at it, then wagged his tail and took a step closer. She said, “You’re a handsome boy, aren’t you? Strong boy.”
When she looked up again, Jace looked—confused. “Dogs like me,” she said sweetly, then picked up her milk and eggs and led the way inside.
Where she almost had a heart attack. The living room had shrunk in perspective like she was viewing it in a funhouse mirror. All she saw was her eggs in the basket held in front of her, and the picture on the mantel looming huge. The one of her and Lily aged seven, in blue jeans, white T-shirts, and ponytails, sitting side-by-side on two enormous pumpkins at what had seemed like a magical pumpkin patch but had actually been a vacant lot beside the freeway. Paige had her arms flung into the air in triumph like Rocky Balboa, and Lily was sitting with her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and a dreamy look on her face. Anyone on the planet would look at that picture and say, “Wow! Identical twins!”
Whoops. “Let’s go into the kitchen,” she said, maneuvering to put her body between Jace and the fireplace and trying to edge him to the right. “I can make coffee.”
Did he oblige? He did not. He looked around and said, “Nice room,” in a tone that said, “I wouldn’t live here if you paid me.”
Paige bristled for her sister. So it was all overstuffed, rose-pink and sea-green, floral, and wicker. It was coordinated. It was pretty. “Let me guess,” she said, still working on her sheepdog moves. “Your home décor is an antique two-man saw nailed to the rafters. A rusty saw.”
“That’s one,” he agreed gravely. “I have antlers as well, though.”
“How did I know,” she muttered, and caught that quirk at the corner of his mouth. At least he was looking at her and not the pictures. He’d also graduated from “pissed off” to “reluctantly amused.”
“Come on,” she said. “Kitchen. Coffee.”
Fortunately, it wasn’t far, and also fortunately, there wasn’t a giant photograph of her and Lily framed in seashells hanging over the stove. That was in the bathroom. Which he wasn’t using, even if it meant sending him out to pee on a tree. She said, “Sit down,” and nodded with her chin at the neat little breakfast bar, done in the same Hansel-and-Gretel green wainscoting as the kitchen cabinets. She set the milk in the fridge and the eggs on the counter and said, “I need to give somebody some eggs. Do you want some eggs? Or goat milk? What do people do with all these?”
“What do you usually do with them?”
“Oh, you know,” she said, waving the coffee decanter airily and almost smashing it into the refrigerator. “This and that.”
“You seem nervous,” he observed. He was sitting perfectly still with his dog lying at his feet, and still giving off that readiness-vibe.
“Maybe because you seem hostile,” she said, shoving the decanter into place and dumping ground coffee into the filter basket. Forget all this dancing around. “One day you’re kissing my hand, the next you’re barking questions at me and squinting your eyes like a badass cowboy in a B movie. What’s with the split personality?”
“Funny,” he said. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing about you.”
Her hand stilled a second, and then she turned the coffeemaker on, turned to face him, and said, “All right. Spit it out. I’m not good with all this hinting. What’s going on?” If he really knew, she’d explain. What did he care whether Lily sold her place or not? He didn’t look like a guy who’d be in the pocket of a developer. He didn’t look like a guy who’d be in the pocket of anybody.
He reached down, lifted the backpack into his lap, and Paige put a hand on the coffee decanter—boiling water worked—and measured the distance to the knife rack. There was a counter between them, and she’d use it.
What he pulled out was a padded envelope. A flat padded envelope. Room for a knife, though. He held it above the counter, shook it, and a few things fell out.
“You collect ladies’ underwear,” Paige said after a second.
His eyes met hers. “That’s what you have to say?”
“You hide your hobby well? Thank you for sharing? What?”
He held the thong up, draped over one finger. “You’re telling me you haven’t seen these before.”
Were they supposed to have come from the shop? “One slightly trampy red thong looks much like another,” she said. “I think blue’s more your color. Also, those aren’t big enough. Love handles are never a good look. Go for the fit, not the label.”
He stared at her. She stared back at him. “Or as they’re in an envelope,” she said slowly, “I’m guessing they were a present. An anonymous present? And you thought I’d sent them. All I can say is, buddy—you might want to check your delusions. I don’t think I’d have had to waste my postage.”
“Because I’d have…”
“Because if you really thought I’d sent you my underwear, you wouldn’t be eyeing me suspiciously and trying to trip me up in my evil lies. You’d be slapping on some Old Spice and getting over here so fast, your feet would barely hit the ground.”
“No,” he said. When she sighed, he added, that hint of a smile crinkling the lines around his eyes, “I don’t wear Old Spice.”
“Yeah. Well.” She pulled two mugs down from the rack, sloshed coffee into both of them, slapped his down in front of him, and said, “As a student of human nature, you just failed. Milk and sugar?”
This time, he grinned. “No. I don’t seem to go for the sweet stuff.”
She poured some goat milk into her own mug, leaned against the cabinet, crossed her ankles, and said, “So let’s hear how your deductive powers drew you to me. And do not tell me it’s because I sell underwear. Please tell me you have more subtlety than that. I have so few illusions left.”
He took a sip of coffee and said, “It’s not really appropriate to share.”
“Uh-huh. I’m not that easily shocked, and I’m in critical need of entertainment right now. Tell me.”
“It was the photos she sent. They could be you.” He stopped, his cup in midair, and muttered, “Blackstone, you wanker.”
“Excuse me?”
He looked at her again. “Just occurred to me. They may not be of the… person who sent them.”
She came around the counter, nudged Tobias gently with her foot, and when he shifted over, climbed onto the other stool. “Tell me. Show me. You’re saying they’re me?”
Oh, no. Lily. Some new campaign to discredit her sister. Any discomfort Paige had felt about her deception vanished. This was nasty. She needed to handle this. Right now.
Jace pulled a clunky black laptop out of the backpack and said, “It takes a bit to boot up. Meanwhile…” He handed her two sheets of folded paper. “This is the second thing I got. In the mail. It’s a story. Call this Part Two. Part One, I burnt.”
She scanned the sheets, then read over them more slowly before she said, “Somebody’s got an active imagination. Somebody reads erotica. A profiler could probably tell you whether the writer’s male or female, but I can’t. Just because it’s a woman in the story doesn’t mean the writer’s a woman. Anybody hitting on you at the hardware store, inviting you to do some male bonding? The underwear could be a double bluff.”
He looked at her, and she sobered and said, “Sorry. Too casual. If you were a woman, showing me this kind of evidence? I’d say you’ve got a stalker. And
that you need to take that seriously.”
“She called me as well. She had my mobile number.” He turned the computer around so the screen faced her, then leaned over and clicked the touchpad. “The third part of the story. Got it this morning, in this envelope.”
Wait. “This morning? Got it where? And she called you?”
“On my porch. The letters came through the mail. This didn’t. That’s when it got real. Before, she called, said something that sounded like a wrong number, than rang off. But I think it was her.”
“Can I see the record of the call?”
He stared at her, shrugged, pulled out his phone, and held it out to her. She looked at it, memorized the number, and tucked the knowledge away.
“Not that it proves anything to you,” he said when he took it back. “But then, I don’t need to prove anything to you.”
She said, “Uh-huh.” Absently, because she was reading. When she finished, she sighed and said, “This mutt’s playing with you.”
“Mutt?”
“Sorry. The person. And they’re too close. Your phone number, your address. You said you got pictures, too? And you thought they were me?”
He twisted the laptop again, clicked some more. “Three photos.” His eyes met hers. “Sure you’re OK with this?”
“Yes.” Not Lily. Please. She looked through the three images, and when she was done, said, trying to ignore the twist in her stomach, “Those could be… me. I don’t think so, but they could be. No identifying marks, no moles, no tattoos. All I can say for sure is that this is a young woman, one who hasn’t had a baby. Could be older, with a boob job, but I don’t think so. And this one—” She clicked again to the third picture. “I can’t say. This isn’t a view I stare at a whole lot. It’s probably the most identifiable, though. That’s what I call a close-up. The others? Yeah, she’s got curves, but you could take them anywhere. A locker room. A bathroom. The first two could be—” She caught herself just in time. “Me, and the third one could be somebody else. Has to be a selfie or taken during sex, but that doesn’t mean the other ones are.”
“A locker room. A bathroom. Or a fitting room,” he said softly.
Her hand jerked on her coffee cup, spilling hot liquid over herself. She jerked her hand away and swore, and he grabbed a napkin off the counter and handed it to her without saying anything.
“I’m getting a security company in to look at the store,” she said. “I was doing it anyway. I just stepped up the priority. To install cameras, and now? To check for them, too.”
“Because of the incident yesterday,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Why only now? Surely that’s happened before. You seemed to catch it so fast. And—wait. Why a woman who hasn’t had a baby? What? I didn’t think all women got stretch marks.”
“Areolae. They look different in women who’ve had babies or not. And your breasts change in other ways.”
“I didn’t realize,” he said, “that a lingerie store owner would know so much.”
“Bra fitting. Obviously,” she added.
“And—mutt? A profiler? Do you read a lot of true crime?”
“I know a cop,” she said after a long pause.
“Usually means, ‘My boyfriend’s a cop.’ Tell me it’s not that.”
“All right. I won’t.”
“Lily.”
She breathed. She focused. Lily was the point. Exactly the point. And the story and those pictures—those were the point, too. Whether it was all connected or not, this wasn’t about her, however close his hard thigh was to hers, however strong the hand was that held his coffee mug. However much controlled intensity she saw in his face.
“You need to take this to the police,” she said. “You need to get it on the record. This is escalation. You had stories mailed, which is one thing, and that could be a fan. But now you’ve had pictures hand-delivered, and an attempt to make contact. I hope I don’t need to tell you not to do that. Men think they can handle things, that they can confront the person, get aggressive, and it’ll end. But stalkers are the same in one way, male or female. It’s a mindset, an obsession. The second you engage, you feed it. Doesn’t matter if the attention’s positive or negative. You feed them, and you’ve just increased your risk. Don’t do it. Go to the cops. Lock your doors. Change your patterns. Consider self-defense.”
She shut up before she could say more. He was looking stunned, and no wonder. He finally said, “Did you have a boyfriend who was a cop?”
She knew how to lie. Why couldn’t she? She looked down, which had her looking at his arm. Chunky black watch. Dark hair. Corded muscle. Too much muscle for a writer. Too much awareness, too much alertness for anything but a very few, very select professions.
“If I answer,” she said, “will you answer me?”
“Yes.”
She looked into his eyes, feeling like she’d been holding her breath too long. “Then—yes.”
Not a movement in his face. “Were you married to a cop?”
She breathed. In and out. “No.”
“Are you married now?”
“No.”
He closed his eyes, opened them again, and she could swear they were bluer. She could see the black shading on his neck where he’d shaved before but hadn’t shaved today. “Your turn,” he said.
She thought for a moment. “Are you really a writer?”
“Yes.”
“What were you before? Exactly?”
His knuckles didn’t tighten on the cup. His eyes didn’t shift. The tone of his voice didn’t change.
“I was a killer.”
When Jace didn’t go on, Paige said, “Explain.”
He took another sip of coffee, then unwound himself from his stool and headed to the coffeemaker. “Want more?” he asked, filling his own cup.
“Sure. I guess I know now why we both like coffee. If you were a… what?”
“Commando.”
When she just looked at him, and presumably when she didn’t fall off her stool from shock, he refilled her cup, came around the bar and sat on his stool again, swiveled to face her with one stockinged foot on the rung of the chair, and said, “Second Commando Regiment, Royal Australian Army. Special forces, Aussie version. Formerly.”
“Suddenly,” she said, “I feel much safer.”
He smiled, nice and slow. “Suddenly, I’m convinced you’re not posting me your undies. Not the reaction I was expecting.” The blue eyes that looked at her over the rim of his cup were warm, and she was feeling pretty warm herself, the tingles radiating down her body and going straight home. “Speaking of professions,” he said, setting the cup down again, “I haven’t known many undies-shop owners who named their pet goats ‘Motherfucker.’”
She gave him a sweet smile of her own. “Maybe you haven’t known enough undies-shop owners. And that’s not her name. It’s Tinkerbelle.”
“I must’ve misheard.” He lifted one big hand to her face and touched her cheek gently, tracing a slow line down until his fingers were beside her mouth. “I like these, by the way. Been wanting to tell you so.”
“My dimples.” She wasn’t doing so well with her breathing. He let his hand fall, and she set down the coffee cup she’d forgotten she was holding and reached out herself. Her heart was beating too hard, and all she was doing was brushing the sleeve of his black T-shirt with her fingertips. But when she raised her gaze to his face, that expression was more intense than ever. That expression could freeze a woman. Or melt her.
She kept looking into his eyes, and he sat perfectly still as she inched up the edge of his sleeve. And then she looked at what she’d uncovered.
That was an arm. Combat-built rather than bodybuilder-massive. Forearm, biceps, triceps, shoulder, all the parts as ordered, and every inch of it hard. That arm said “testosterone.” Or maybe it was her body saying it. Something was sure saying it.
She pushed the fabric up nearly to his shoulder until she was looking at the entire
tattoo. A pair of intersecting diamonds with an unsheathed dagger in the middle, long and lethal. With a banner across it.
She didn’t let the sleeve fall, because she could feel the tension in his muscles, his awareness of her touch, and she needed to keep feeling it. Her mouth had gone dry. “What does it say?” she whispered.
“Foras Admonitio.”
“Which means?”
“Without warning.”
“Ah.” It was a sigh, and then she did the other thing. She traced the diagonal white line, all four inches of it, that marred the tattoo. Just her fingertips running along it, and the muscle jumped under her touch. “And this?”
“Souvenir.”
“Mm.”
“You like that?”
“Yeah.” Barely a breath.
When his hand came up to brush over her cheek, she leaned into it, and her hand was still on him, her eyes still looking into his.
A gentle brush of his lips over hers, and her eyes were drifting closed. The pulse that went through her was nothing like gentle, though, and when his hand cradled her head and he deepened the kiss, she made a sound. She was afraid it was a moan.
She could feel his lips curving against hers, and he kissed his way to her dimple, lingered there, and whispered, “Like that, too?”
Oh, yeah.
Lily.
She sat up so fast, she had to catch herself on the edge of the counter, then shoved a hand into her hair, dropped it again, and said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“But then,” he said, “you didn’t. I did.” His eyes had lost their softness. “What is this? What is it you want?”
“I just—I can’t—” She stopped. What did she say now? She slid off the stool and tried to think.
He stood up, too, and Tobias hauled himself to his feet and stood looking up at him. “Wait,” Jace said. “I’m being an insensitive bastard again, aren’t I?”
“No. Of course not. My fault.” Her hands were trying to scrub over her pants, but she was wearing an apron. Because she was Lily.
“You’re divorced,” he guessed. “How long?”
Guilty as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 1) Page 11