Guilty as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 1)

by Rosalind James

  “Well, yeah,” Jace said, “we probably do. Hardwired. But we don’t have to stay there. And if you want to push me away,” he told Paige, “you’ll have to wait until morning. But if you do? Don’t pretend I’m the one leaving.”

  It was those eyes. They were too blue. Too intense. It was the way he made her feel, too. What had he said? Precious. Cared for. Even when she was grumpy. Even when she was mean. Her eyes filled with tears, to her horror. Lily made a noise, and Jace said, “Oh, baby. No.” He sat on the edge of the bed again, took her in his arms like she was made of glass, and held her.

  She might have had to haul in a few more breaths, and wipe away those treacherous tears, too. “Sorry,” she said. “Long day. Lots of… feelings. My sister. You. And you’re right. It’s me. Having a hard time. With, uh…”

  That hadn’t been too coherent, but maybe he got it, because he said, “Yeah. Believing takes some doing. And maybe it’s better to bring it up. If you didn’t, how would you know?”

  “Now you’re just being perfect,” she said, and tried to smile. “Perfectly imperfect. Admitting your imperfection. Really? Every man?”

  “I reckon. Sorry. Soldiers have heaps of spare time, and only a few subjects of genuine common interest. They play too much poker, get too competitive over ping-pong or whatever naff thing there is to get competitive about, and talk too much about sex. Put it that I’m fairly clued in on the fantasy life of the young Aussie male. And that some things are universal.”

  Lily said in a faint voice, “You guys. I did not need to know this. Every man wants to have sex with twins?”

  “No,” Jace said. “But most of the men I’ve known have probably thought about it. And I just told you that I’m not doing it. Am I thinking that Paige can be bloody annoying? Maybe. But that’s as far as I’m prepared to go.” He got off the bed. “Tobias and I are going to sleep. We’re busy men. Got goats to milk, and morning’s coming.”

  Paige woke up to the smell of coffee again.

  She opened her eyes, sat up with less trouble than yesterday morning, and said to Lily, who was perched next to her at the bed, having clearly just deposited said cup of coffee on the bedside table, “I could get used to this.”

  “What, me?” Lily asked. “Or Jace? Because I sure can see how that could happen. I got up at seven-thirty, and he’d already made the coffee and was out with the animals. I practically had to arm-wrestle him in order to milk my girls. He settled for cleaning out the stalls. He’s too scary for me, but boy, is he competent. And he’s cooking breakfast right now. How can a man look that good cooking? It’s a confidence thing, I guess. Do they make all the guys like that in Australia?”

  “I don’t know. He’s my first one. Pretty good, huh?”

  “Well, yeah. Pretty good.” Lily smiled. “Last night, what he said in here? He kind of swept me away. And I wish you’d videotaped that at the meeting. I can’t wait to go to the store and hear about it. That must have been something, to watch him really turn it on.”

  Paige wanted to go downstairs and watch him do it right now. Way, way too much. To buy herself some time while she debated how good an idea that was, she eyed Lily in her gray leggings with lace bottoms and long pink hooded sweater and asked, “So did you milk in that?”

  “No. I put my overalls over them, like always.”

  “Which are where?”

  “Hanging on the back porch, of course. They were under my raincoat, is all. Is that why you were wearing the apron when you met Jace?”

  “Well, yeah. How was I supposed to know they were on the back porch?” She swung her legs out of bed and took her coffee. “It’s dress-your-Barbie time. Could you get me set for work, pretty please? It’s tiring thinking up all those layers. I’m sure I’m messing up on the accessorizing. You’re probably getting a bad reputation.”

  “You’re not going to work, though.”

  “Sure I am. I’m a fast healer, but I’m not fast enough to be you already. And we’ve got this sale. Wow, it’s already eight-thirty? Come on. You could cover up my face for me, too. I’ll bet you know how.”

  Lily not only knew how, she did it fast. When the two of them came downstairs, Jace looked up from where he was hauling something out of the oven and said, “Now that’s a change.”

  Paige said, “It’s pink, I know.” Nearly a match for the outfit Lily was wearing, except that hers had more lace. “I was thinking that if somebody sees both of us, somehow, over the next couple days, the more alike we look, the better. They can wonder how they just saw me at the shop and now I’m home, but we’ll be the same woman, and people are good at rationalizing. My upper lip’s not hideous anymore, did you notice?”

  “I did. Good work on the makeup as well.”

  “Ah. Well. That’s Lily.” She eased herself onto the kitchen stool and said, “So what did you make for us?”

  “A French toast casserole. Soft. No chewing.”

  “Competent,” Lily said with a meaningful glance at Paige.

  “Nah,” Jace said. “Lazy. Easier than cooking them one by one.” Lily was already pulling out plates and cutlery, and Jace dished up casserole and cut-up strawberries, filled orange juice glasses, set out maple syrup, and said, “And you’ve been thinking. I can tell by the look on your face. You’re dying to tell me. I’ve been thinking too, though. I’ll go first so you can eat this.”

  Paige said to Lily, “He’s competent, yeah, and, all right, he’s seriously hot, too, but he’s awfully pushy, see?”

  “He’s right here,” Jace said.

  “Hey,” she said. “That was a compliment.” He raised a black eyebrow at her, and she said, “Mostly.”

  “Mm.” He leaned back against the counter, took in the pair of them sitting at the counter in their pink sweaters, and said, “You’re right. Up close, I still see that bruising, and I’d see the body language, too. But from a distance? No. So here’s my idea. You go into the shop and tell Hailey and everybody else who comes in that you’ve moved in with me to keep yourself safe. Ring Brett Hunter and tell him as well. I’ll go to the Red Rooster, force some more breakfast down myself, and say the same thing. Then I’ll go by the police station and the gym and make sure everybody there knows it, too. If I was effective last night, it’ll work.”

  “And what do I do?” Lily asked.

  “You stay home,” Jace said. “It’s Thursday. Three days until your deadline. You stay invisible. We’ll come by twice a day for the animals, show ourselves coming and going, so like Paige says—if somebody sees you here, they’ll think it’s Paige. Or rather, they’ll think that both of you are you.” He shook his head. “I get confused myself, and I’m here looking at the two of you.”

  “I don’t like leaving her here alone,” Paige said. “Even with the alarms and the cameras. If somebody’s really determined to force me out, here my property is. And Lily’s here.”

  “Leave Tobias here?” Jace suggested. “Best early-warning system there is. Best home defense, too.”

  The party in question was lying at Paige’s feet right now. Her stockinged foot was stroking over his back, in fact. “I’ll miss him,” she said, “but you’re right. I’d feel better.” It was just a few days. It wasn’t playing house with Jace. It wasn’t the kind of dangerous pretending her heart couldn’t afford. It was drawing attention away from Lily, that was all.

  Lily said, “But then Tobias isn’t with you, Jace. And I thought you had somebody after you, too. Don’t you need home defense?”

  “I’m spending today getting my place alarmed as well,” he said. “And I’m the second-best home defense there is.”

  “That’s the wild card,” Paige said, trying to ignore the rush he gave her. It was that competence thing, or maybe that hard-man thing. Whatever it was, she’d found the quality that charmed the pants right off her. “Even after your show-and-tell last night. Whoever your stalker is, she’s crazy, and I still think she could’ve been the one who hit me. Just in case she was—do you thi
nk we take that twelve-gauge to your house, or leave it here for Lily and buy another one? I could go with you, maybe, so everybody sees me do it.”

  “Take it with you,” Lily said. “Please don’t leave it with me.”

  “Still?” Paige asked. “Even after I showed you how to use one? It’s easy. It’s effective. It’ll make a mess of your house, but it’s pretty much guaranteed to work. That ker-chunk when you pump it can work wonders all by itself.”

  “True,” Jace said. “What’s the effectiveness of a cop with a handgun nowadays, Paige?”

  “Life-threatening situation? Forty percent max from right up close. That’s a trained officer who’s shot that weapon tens of thousands of times and qualified on the range. There’s a great big difference between action and reaction,” she told Lily, “and between having somebody shooting back at you and not. A civilian? They’re mostly going to miss, despite my recent experience. But not with a shotgun. That’s the point.”

  “I can’t help it,” Lily said. “I don’t like them. You don’t like bees, and I don’t like guns. Which makes a whole lot more sense than bees, by the way. If Jace is willing to leave Tobias with me, I’ll be much happier with him. And if somebody breaks in, I’ll get out. Did you think of that? I know you guys would rather shoot. I’d rather get out so I don’t have to. I have twenty acres, and I know them better than anybody else would.”

  “Country girl,” Jace said.

  Lily lifted her chin. “Yes. And no, I wasn’t born that way, and I know Paige doesn’t get it. But there’s such a thing as the life you were meant to live. There’s such a thing as the place in your heart.”

  Jace held out a palm. “No worries. I was born into a military family, myself, but so was my brother. Sometimes it takes. Sometimes something else does.”

  “Like when I saw your pictures last night,” Paige somehow had to say, “and I got that hard rush. Something about a man in uniform that does it for me, maybe.”

  His smile started slow, as usual. It started in his eyes. “Well,” he said, “that’s good news. It could be that I’ve got a thing for a woman in uniform myself. But we were talking about your sister. And country living. How she wasn’t born to it. Which I want to hear.”

  “We’re from Modesto,” Paige said. “The closest we got to the farm was the stockyards. That’s where our dad worked. All I ever thought was that if I never smelled that again, it’d be too soon.”

  “Which is why,” Lily said, “I don’t have a stockyard. I have five beautiful, clean little goats. I have pines and cedars and Douglas fir. I have mountains and snow and a creek. I love them, and I’m going to keep them, but I’m not going to hurt anybody for them. That’s my line in the sand.”

  Jace drove Paige to work, since Lily’s car was still parked at the gym. “Give me the keys,” he told Paige on the drive, “and I’ll check it out and drive it to the shop for you.”

  He could feel her hesitate, and he knew why. “It wasn’t a marriage proposal,” he said. “It was an offer to drive your car three blocks.”

  She set the keys in the center console. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He stopped at the sign at the edge of town, then headed on through.

  She said, “I don’t like leaving Lily out there without her car, but it’s a lot more convincing to have it sitting outside your house.”

  “That’s the idea.” He stopped outside the shop. “She has your number. She has my number. She has Tobias. And from what I see, she’s got a good brain in her head. Heaps of courage, too. She does it differently than you do. That doesn’t mean she does it worse.”

  She sighed. “Would you stop being so smart?”

  He laughed out loud. “Can’t help it. I was born that way.”

  He drove away again after kissing her good-bye. Not on her sore mouth, but on her cheek. And no kind of a passionate clinch. A gentle hold, a tender touch, the back of his hand brushing down the side of her face. He could have said it was for effect, but it would have been a lie. And when she smiled into his eyes and said, “See you at Lily’s at six-fifteen?” and he said, “Yeah”—that felt real.

  She was limping when she walked across to the shop. The boards still covered the window, and the bold, brave sign and pink-and-white balloons still announced a special, secret sale that you had to come inside to find. Making lemonade out of those lemons. Rising to the challenge. Again.

  He turned the ute around and headed for home. Said, “Tobias, mate—” then realized that Tobias wasn’t there.

  He headed up the mountain. Time to install some more cameras, some more sensors. Get the cabin ready for whatever anybody wanted to throw at it. Paige wanted to be that mama bird dragging its wing, drawing the predator away from the nest? He got it, even though he suspected Lily was a bit tired of being the baby bird. But the mama bird had better have some armor. So to speak. And whether she liked it or not, part of that armor was going to be him.

  Up his drive on the thought, then rocking to a hard stop in front of the garage.

  He should have brought Tobias.

  The lunch rush was slowing down, Paige was selling a clearance nightgown, and Hailey was starting to set up the Thrill Him Tonight plus-size display when Paige’s phone buzzed on the counter. She knew it was Lily before she looked. Checking in on her.

  The customer, a blonde whom Paige was pretending to know, said, “All of us are so shocked about what happened to you the other night. It’s all anybody’s been talking about.”

  “Really?” Paige swiped the woman’s credit card and keyed in the amount. “Nobody’s talking about Jace?”

  “Well, maybe.” The blonde sighed. “I wish I’d been there last night so I could have seen the pictures. It all sounded very exciting. I’m sure you don’t need that kind of excitement, of course. I mean,” she went on hastily when Paige smiled, “the attack part. Oh, dear. Sorry.”

  Paige laughed. It still hurt, but it helped. “Yeah. Some excitement is better than others.” She wrapped the nightgown in tissue, set it carefully into a cream-striped Sinful Desires carrier bag, and handed it over. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks,” the woman said. “I’ll be back.”

  She left, and the store was empty for the moment, so Paige seized her chance and called Lily back. Lily said, “Paige.”

  “I’m doing great for your business,” Paige told her sister. “You should see how many women are coming in today just for the news value. And then they see our sale rack. Wait until we make our switch and they all realize what’s actually been going on. That’ll really be something. You’ll have a line out the door.”

  “Wait,” Lily said. “Listen.”

  It was the tone in her voice. Paige had already grabbed her purse and was out from behind the counter. She told Lily, “Hang up and call 911. I’m on my way.” How hadn’t she realized something was happening? And why hadn’t Lily called Jace? That had been the plan.

  She was halfway to the door when Lily said, “It’s not me. Get back in there. Just listen. It’s Jace.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t call you?” Lily asked. “See, that’s what I was worried about. Why do you both have to be so tough all the time? He only called me to warn me. Otherwise, he’d have bitten the bullet. Would he even have told you tonight?”

  “Lily. What happened? And where is he?” Oh, no. She’d been thinking so much about Lily’s safety, she hadn’t thought nearly enough about Jace’s.

  “He’s at home. Somebody trashed his place. And Paige. When you talk to him—remember that he’s just like you. He’s not worried about himself. He’s worried about you.”

  Ten minutes later, she was there. No cop car at his cabin. No Tobias. Nothing but Jace’s black truck backed all the way up to the porch and a boarded-over front window on the cabin that matched the one at the shop. And two kitchen chairs, a pile of couch cushions, and a few trash bags stacked neatly in the back of the pickup like it was moving day. Except that it wasn’t
anything like that.

  By the time Paige had turned the car off, her pulse rate had picked all the way up, and she was having to work to control her breathing. Jace stepped out onto the porch holding two green trash bags, and no matter what Lily had said, Paige couldn’t help it. She was coming in hot.

  Jace slung the bags off the porch and into the bed of the truck and said, “Get your hands off your hips and take a breath. It’s fine. I’ve got a plan.”

  She didn’t do either. “It is not fine. Why would you say that? Why didn’t you get Tobias back? Lily said you refused. Did you call the cops? What did they say? Tell me they took it seriously this time.”

  He regarded her much too calmly. “Which question do you want me to answer first? And do you want to hear, or do you want to fight? What did I say about your hands?”

  Oh. They were still on her hips. She relaxed her arms with an effort, heaved some air into her lungs, and said, “OK. I’m calm. OK.”

  “Good. And you could give me the rest of that earbashing from down there, or you could come on up here with me.”

  She headed up the stairs, and he took her good right hand and helped her. When she got there, she blew out a breath and said, “I was scared for you.”

  “I know.” He pulled her in gently, kissed her cheek, rubbed a slow hand over her back, and said, “It’s good to see you, too.”

  She needed to stand here a moment longer. Just a moment. “Lily didn’t tell me much. I couldn’t tell if you’d been here when it happened, even. Let me guess. You didn’t want to scare her.”

  “Could be.” He kissed her cheek again. “Or could be I didn’t want her to call you. I told her not to. Pity neither of you listen.”

  “Yeah, right. Like she’s not going to call me.” Then she looked through the open door and forgot that. Her heart rate picked up again, too. It wasn’t her first crime scene, or her fiftieth. Clearly, though, it was different when you didn’t have any professional distance. She breathed some more, then said, “Well, that’s horrible.”