Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2)

by Skully, Jennifer

  At the moment, however, anything was better than wayward fingers or wayward thoughts. “Hello?”

  “You didn’t screen.”

  “Hello, MOTHER.” That’s how Simone always thought of her mother, in capital letters. “I saw it was you.”

  “You didn’t.” Her mother had blocking.

  “It must have been telepathy then.” If it had been telepathy, she would have been sure not to answer. Not that she didn’t love her mother dearly. Ariana Chandler was the sweetest, kindest, most thoughtful mother in the world. At least, that’s how everyone described her. And she was. Truly. Very thoughtful, caring, helpful, concerned. But these monthly calls were...well, they were like the monthly curse; Simone needed to take a muscle relaxant for five days afterward.

  “Did you get the care package your sister and I sent?”

  “Yes. Thank you, MOTHER.”

  “And they fit?” Why did her mother sound so surprised?

  “Of course.” Actually, Simone had never even tried them on. More than satisfied with her own clothes, she’d driven to Bullhead and given all her sister’s designer castoffs to Goodwill. She was not a designer kind of girl, and Goldstone was not a designer town. She would have looked ridiculous walking around in Ralph Lauren. If her mother had ever visited Goldstone, she’d know that.

  “I knew what an incentive that first box of beautiful dresses would be in helping you with your little weight problem. So I thought you deserved another set. Besides, Jacqueline needed to go through her closet and get rid of last year’s fashions.”

  Simone did not fit into her sister’s size zero clothing. She would never fit into size zero clothing. She didn’t want to fit into them. Her head started aching. She knew her mother meant well, she did, but she really, really didn’t think she had a weight problem. Except once a month when her mother called.

  “So, how’s the job hunt going, dear?”

  Simone’s stomach lurched. Her mother had never gotten over her daughter’s spectacular failure, which had, embarrassingly, made it into the L.A. papers. Even the memory of all those delinquent accounts receivables and unreturned phone calls to insolvent clients gave Simone a migraine. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” her mother had always said. But Simone had. When the stock market dropped the basket, Simone had gotten crushed beneath the broken shells. Ariana never stopped hoping that Simone would “turn her life around.” Despite the amount of time since her business debacle, her mother had not given up.

  “It’s coming along,” Simone fibbed. “I’ve got a few bites out there but nothing solid yet.”

  She hadn’t searched for a job in three years. She loved her new life. With all the nifty payment options available on the Internet, she got her clients funds before she sent them a word. She’d learned that lesson the hard way. Show me the money first. Her alluring fantasy website was going gangbusters. “Tell me your wildest dreams,” her banner advertised, “and I’ll write you a story to send you and your lover into orbit.” Sex on the Internet was the hottest thing. Her mother wouldn’t get the appeal. Prone to ripping out hair under duress, she’d be bald within three minutes of learning about Simone’s venture.

  “Well, I’ve got a list of people for you to contact,” her mother continued. “And please do try to make a good impression. Don’t tell them you live in a trailer.” Simone visualized her mother’s shudder from the sound of her voice. “Have you got a pen and paper?”

  “Yes, MOTHER.” Simone had DSL, a state-of-the-art computer system into which she could have typed the information as quickly as the spoken word, and an Outlook address book the size of which would rival the one in her mother’s smart phone. She doodled on a nearby Post-it as her mother read aloud.

  “Now, let me tell you what to say in the initial letters. I think for Ambrose, that darling man, you should tackle it this way—” Her mother suddenly sucked in a breath. “You are going to wear makeup and fix your hair properly, aren’t you?”

  “It’s a letter. He’s not going to see me.”

  “Well, a positive self-image creates a positive attitude the recipient can sense even through the writing. And you could be such a pretty girl if only you’d—”

  The doorbell rang. Oh thank you God above. Thank you, thank you, smooches. “Someone’s at the door, I have to run. I’ll call you later and you can tell me exactly what to say.”

  She hung up in the middle of her mother’s “But—”

  Brax stood on the outer doorstep, across the expanse of the sunporch. Her heart gave a weird, scary little leap at the sight of him. Then she reminded herself that according to Maggie he was only here for a two-week vacation. And he’d asked her if she was sleeping with his brother-in-law.

  “Peace offering.” He held the DVD case against the screen door so she could read The Wizard of Oz on the front. “Drove all the way back into Bullhead to find it.”

  She stayed on the threshold of her front door and tried to be tough when what she really wanted to do was drag him inside. “I’ve already got it.”

  He waggled the case. “But this is the anniversary edition. With the jitterbug sequence they cut out of the movie.”

  “Oh.” That sounded delightful. The sneak. He’d already figured out her weaknesses. “Did you know they considered cutting ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ because they thought it slowed the pacing?”

  He opened the screen door and crossed half the porch width. “Some bright guy must have saved their butts at the last minute. So, are we betting on whether they’re sisters?”

  “What do I win?” Which didn’t mean she was letting him in. Brax was dangerous, the type to make her lose control.

  “The question is”—his gaze dropped from her eyes to linger on her lips—“what’s my prize?”

  Whoa, the man gave potent eye scan. Nothing at all like the way Jason Lafoote did it. Maybe Brax could come in, just for the movie, because he’d driven so far to get it. She could always seat him on the other end of the sofa. And make him leave after they watched the movie. She would definitely have to make him leave before she did something embarrassing, like go into meltdown if he touched her.

  “Since I’m going to win,” she answered, holding the front door wide, “I want...” Well, there were those very nice fantasies she’d been having all day, but she wouldn’t clue him in. He’d never know, not in any infinitesimal way. They were only fantasies. “I want ice cream. And you’ll have to drive out and get it.” She backed up.

  He followed her into her living room. “Ice cream. Sounds fair. But since I’m gonna win”—his voice dropped, and he leaned in close enough to tickle her ear with his breath—“I think I might like to have you lick the ice cream off my cone.”

  Uh-oh. Now that was a euphemism for tallywhacker she’d never heard before.

  And Trouble with a capital T.

  Chapter Four

  He shouldn’t have read the teaser on her website. A massage scene involving only neck and shoulders, its sensuality still managed to evoke a purely male reaction. It also impaired his manners. That could be the only excuse for what he’d said. Brax had to admit he’d been imagining ice-cream cones, which was not a bad thing in and of itself. But sex complicated matters, especially when he was in Goldstone for only two weeks. He shouldn’t have given voice to the image.

  She smiled that perfect smile of hers, the one that made him weak in the knees. The dazzle smile. “Shall we get started?”

  God, yes.

  Beautiful eyes wide, she bit her lip. “With the movie, I mean.”

  He knew that. “Sure.” It was the slickest dialogue he could muster when he felt as tongue-tied as a teenage boy.

  He really shouldn’t have read that teaser. Snippets of it muddled his main goal. Which was...it was...oh yeah, to determine if she could lie without the telling body language that clued a cop into when he was being snookered by a suspect. Yes, that was his goal in coming over tonight.

  That and giving Maggie time alone t
o talk things out with Carl.

  He hadn’t picked up the movie because he wanted to watch it with her in a darkened room, sitting close on that big sofa, drinking in the citrus fragrance of her hair and the sweet scent of her skin. Nope, he’d intended to do a little subtle interrogating.

  And that’s what he’d do.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said suddenly.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you can’t decide whether to cart me off to jail for being an axe murderess or...” Her voice trailed off and she bit her lip again. Her nip plumped the flesh to a lush, inviting fullness.

  A cop had to be good at schooling his features, keeping his true thoughts off his face and out of his eyes. Brax was usually damn good at it, too, but Simone saw right through him.

  Maybe he shouldn’t salivate quite so much when looking at her hair tumbling over her shoulders in artful disarray almost as if she’d been in bed when he’d shown up at her door. But then he’d started remembering that slow sensual massage.

  He picked up her hand and placed the DVD in it. “Why don’t you put the movie in?” That should get his mind off creamy shoulders and a bare nape begging to be kissed.

  She backed up a step, stopped only by the edge of the coffee table. “Popcorn. I should make some popcorn.”

  He pulled a packet from his back pocket and tossed it on the table. “I brought licorice.” Why the hell he’d picked out the candy while waiting in line for the video, he couldn’t say. “Start the movie,” he whispered, as if he were talking about something far different. Her scent teased his nose.

  The goal, he repeated to himself as she slipped from between him and the table to kneel in front of the TV.

  She fumbled opening the DVD, then again trying to get the disk out. Those damn disks could be tricky. Pushing a button, the player flashed on and a tray slid out. She plopped the disk in, closed the tray, then hopped to her feet and skittered across the living room to the couch. Grabbing a remote, she flopped down on a cushion in the corner and pointed.

  Nothing happened.

  “Darn it,” she whispered and poked at the remote a couple of times.

  He held out his hand. “Here.”

  She clutched the gadget to her chest. “I know how to work my own remote.”

  He glanced at the blank TV. “I don’t see anything.”

  She pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, and pointed again. Still nothing. She pushed a series of buttons in sequence, with the same result. Nothing.

  “You’re a jinx. It always worked before.” She tossed it to him.

  He looked at it, pushed one button, and the TV came to life.

  “How’d you do that?”

  He beamed the way Whitey had last night in the Flood’s End mirror when she told him he should have been a writer. “Remotes are man’s work.”

  He pushed a series of buttons and magically the opening credits began to roll.

  “Sit.” She gestured to the opposite end of the couch. “Over there.”

  He plopped down in the middle, next to her, his knee almost touching hers. “It’s more comfortable here.”

  She looked at him, not the screen, where Dorothy was doing...something. In the fading light of the evening sun, Simone’s hazel eyes deepened to a richer shade of green. Her lip biting had transferred a dash of red lipstick to her front tooth. She closed her mouth and licked it off, as if she’d known what fascinated him.

  He slid an arm along the back of the sofa until his hand touched the gold of her hair. Soft. Silky. Just as he’d imagined. He took a lock between his thumb and two fingers, stroking it.

  “What are you doing?”

  Getting lost in the feel of her hair.

  Which was not the reason he’d sat so close. No, he’d chosen that exact spot because the sun was setting and the room was darkening, and he’d needed to be close to read the expression in her eyes when he questioned her. At least that’s what he’d told himself, so why wasn’t he doing some basic interrogation?

  She leaned over and snagged the bag of licorice he’d thrown on the table. “Can I open it?”

  “Sure.”

  She ripped the package, pulled out a whip, then offered the bag to him. Brax shook his head.

  “I logged onto your website.” That wasn’t what he was supposed to say. He was supposed to ask a question he already knew the answer to, a difficult or embarrassing question about which she might feel the need to lie. To gauge her reaction and analyze how her brain functioned. He was supposed to administer a test.

  “Oh.” Her gaze flicked to the TV screen. “You’re missing the witch.”

  He heard the music and knew the old witch was riding her bicycle with Toto in the basket. “I’ve seen this part.”

  She sucked on the end of the licorice, then bit off a small chunk, chewing as she watched him instead of the movie.

  He didn’t realize he’d leaned closer until she put the flat of her hand to his chest and pushed. If she’d used her finger, he’d have lost it completely.

  “Brax.”

  “Hmm.” He loved the way her lips puckered around his name.

  “I might write erotica on the Internet, but I’m not going to lick your ice-cream cone.”

  His ice-cream cone reacted immediately, as if she’d said the opposite. “Bad choice of words on my part.”

  “It was?” Was that disappointment in her voice? She bit off two more pieces of licorice and stared at him thoughtfully.

  “Yeah.” She wasn’t an ice-cream-cone-on-the-first-date kind of woman. “I don’t know what came over me.” A lingering heat from reading about sensual massage had come over him.

  And the dazzle of her smile that had flitted through his dreams last night.

  She stuck the last bit of red licorice between her lips.

  He backed off, leaned heavily against the sofa to run both hands through his hair. Where the hell was his perspective? It wasn’t just his life that had turned upside down in Cottonmouth. He, himself, had become topsy-turvy. He was usually rational, analytical, and focused. His reactions to Simone, however, had proved anything but. “I’m exceptionally sorry.”

  She hummed beside him.

  “I’m usually more circumspect.”

  Then she started to sing along with the movie. Slightly off-key, deeper than Judy Garland’s sweet tones, but Simone’s voice burrowed beneath his ribs and shot up to grab hold of his heart. Something glistened in her pretty hazel eyes. The notion gripped him that she wasn’t singing for Dorothy, but for herself, and she had yet to find her way over any rainbows.

  Maggie had told him as much.

  He stroked the back of her hand with his knuckles. She hugged her knees to her chest, her bare feet flat on the sofa, her toes curled over the edge. Then she blinked away tears.

  He thought she might flick off his touch, but instead she said, “I love that song.” She glanced at him, as if to assess his reaction. “I’m a sucker for sappy movies.”

  He was a sucker for her. “We should get to know each other better.”

  She gave him a where-the-hell-did-that-come-from look.

  “I mean, we should get to know each other better before we start thinking about ice-cream cones.” Not that he couldn’t think about them, in the most politically correct fashion, of course. Whatever that was.

  She continued to hug her knees. “I bet Maggie already told you everything there is to know about me.”

  And, he surmised, Maggie had probably told her everything there was to know about him. “Does that bother you?”

  She thought about it, staring at a point on the sofa beyond his head. “No. Everyone knows everything around here. I suppose you want to know about my spectacular failure in the cutthroat world of technical writing.”

  His hand trailed down her leg to her feet where she’d now crossed them at the ankles. “If it’s important.”

  “Important? Of course it’s important.”

  Why? Everyone failed at so
mething or other in their lives. Divorce. Letting your friend get murdered. Countless errors in judgment with eventual disastrous consequences for someone.

  He knew Maggie hadn’t told her about his Cottonmouth failure. He hadn’t given Maggie more than the bare facts without the emotion. He certainly hadn’t shared the guilt. He wouldn’t burden Simone with it now. But he would listen to whatever she needed to tell him.

  “Tell me.” Tell me everything about yourself.

  She rested her chin on her knees and looked at him. “My mother always says I’m like the little squirrel who runs out into the middle of the road in front of a speeding car. I twitch this way and that way, and before I make up my mind which way to run, I get squashed.”

  Her mother. He really did not like the woman without even having met her. “But you’re doing fine now.”

  He no longer questioned that she’d thrived in Goldstone. He had the feeling that Simone would thrive wherever life dumped her. After all, she’d always have that smile.

  * * * * *

  Simone tipped her head to one side. “Yeah. I feel safe and secure here in Goldstone. This is my home.” Putting her foot down, she tapped against the carpet and floor of her trailer. “It’s got a foundation, you know. Most trailers sit on cinder blocks, but this one’s got a real foundation.”

  “It’s a very nice trailer.”

  She laughed. Brax couldn’t know how many times she’d heard similar platitudes. “You sound like my mother. She chokes every time she has to say the word trailer so she avoids it like the plague.”

  “I mean it. You seem...” He paused. Probably searching for the right word again so he wouldn’t offend her. “Settled.”

  It was a good description. Most people never found that settled place. They were always looking for more, needing more, never content with what they had. Simone savored the peace Goldstone had brought her. “I’m doing great. Never better.”

  “So, what else do you want?”

  “It’s your turn. I answered, now I get to ask.”

  He considered her a moment, putting his hand on her foot. Only once he was touching her again did he say, “Okay, shoot your question.”