by Linda Welch
I was way past the talking stage. I licked my lips and concentrated on his body language. If he even thought about moving, I would shoot him. I steadied my aim.
“You’re not going to shoot me.”
The air blurred and the gun left my hand. He sat on the side of my bed. Confused, astonished, I tried to scoot back and his hand clamped on my thigh right where it hurt. I flinched. He took his hand away as if burned.
He lifted his hands, palm out. “I am not going to hurt you, Tiff. You have my word. But I need answers.”
The man had a peculiar affect on me. It seemed my commonsense took a nosedive. I opened my mouth, meaning to tell him to leave and instead it blurted what it should have kept to itself. “One of them was in Coralinda Marchant’s apartment when I found Lawrence’s drawing.”
“What happened?”
“Usual stuff. Chased me, knocked me down, then his buddy tried to take me for a ride.” I shrugged. “You know, same old same old.”
His fingers wrapped my wrist just below the bandage. “Did they hurt you?”
I looked down. “That? My fault entirely. Silly me. I should know better than jump from a moving vehicle.”
His eyes darkened, the pupils stood out like chips of onyx. “They will pay for that.”
His chill, implacable tone made me shrink back.
The ice melted from his eyes. He frowned, all concerned-looking. “I frighten you. Do you think I’m like them? Is that it?”
“You’re one of them,” I growled.
His frown deepened. “Oh. I see.”
He had an eyeful of my cleavage and I tried to pull the sheet up higher, but he was sitting on it. The extra pressure put on my various abrasions did not help.
“Now I’m going to tell you what you think,” he said.
Oh, yeah? I inwardly sneered. Like I needed another know-it-all guy who thought he had me figured out.
“You think I am in cahoots with the men who chased you.”
Well, duh. “They aren’t men. You aren’t a man!”
“I am, indeed, a man. I am not precisely, physically, built like a human male, but the differences are insignificant.”
Not precisely? Whoa! “You didn’t seem too surprised to see them.”
“I knew they were in Clarion, but likewise, they knew of my presence. This was the first time I got close enough to identify them.”
“You knew they were here?” Ditto on the duh. Of course he knew his buddies were in Clarion.
“We sense one another.”
Sense? What did he mean? Like Lindy sensed Lawrence? “You did arrest them, didn’t you?”
“I let them get away.”
I slumped back on the pillows, my mouth curling. “And I’m sure you have a totally logical reason?”
“I will not battle two of my fellows in the middle of town.”
“Why not? You’re a cop. Cops arrest people all the time.”
“They would not have come quietly. It would have been a bloody spectacle. Now I know them, I know where to find them.”
I opened my mouth, but he held up one hand. “You believe those men and I are after the same thing, and you are correct.”
“Lawrence.”
“Lawrence,” he agreed. “But I want to help Lawrence. I want to save his life.”
“I’m sure their motives are equally pure.”
He almost rolled his eyes. Almost. “In my world, as in yours, there are bad guys and there are good guys. I am one of the good guys. I’ve been trying to get between them and their victims for the past six years. Mostly, I failed.”
All those poor little boys.
“As I know who they are now, I can track them. They could lead me to Lawrence. You have to trust me, Tiff.”
Trust him? I wanted to and had no idea why. I wanted to believe him. I wanted him to be the good guy. But was it wishful thinking because he was so gorgeous, or did he use demon magic to sway me? Either way, trusting him was not a wise choice, not with what I knew about demons and this one in particular. And he had not said anything to persuade me he told the truth.
All I had was the word of a demon, and sorry, it was not enough.
Another silence with the clock tocking in the background and his gaze riveted to my face. I wondered what his hair would look like loose, sliding over his shoulders.
We sat and stared at each other. Don’t look in his eyes, don’t look! I told myself, but I did. He shifted on the bed to face me, leaned in, and I thought he must hear my heartbeat. I forced my body erect, but my nipples embarrassed me by perking beneath my nightgown; loose as it was, they still stood up like happy little miniature mountain peaks. His gaze went to them; he very slowly arched one eyebrow.
I crossed my arms over my breasts. “Cold in here.”
Supporting himself with one hand on the mattress, he leaned in yet closer. “It must be you. I feel … warm.” And the bastard unfastened the top button of his shirt, then the next one down, baring a triangle of smooth pale-copper skin, looking in my eyes all the while.
His eyes twinkled with what could be amusement.
I glared angrily, shamed by my body’s response, as I realized he laughed at me. Or … teased? He saw my reaction and teased me! Teasing was outside my experience. Taunting, yes - kids can be so cruel to one another - teasing, no. The guy had some nerve, waltzing in here and having fun at my expense.
I thought I learned to control my facial expression and body language long ago, but Royal Mortensen read me. What began as a muffled chuckle came from his mouth as a guffaw. I grew hot with mortification as he composed his features.
He grinned at me as he said in a low, throaty voice, “If I can prove you’re wrong in one thing, will you listen to me?”
I hugged myself tighter, said briskly. “Tell me and I’ll think about it.”
He disarmed me with a broad smile. “I don’t have pointy teeth, Tiff.”
And he didn’t. His teeth were white and even and perfect in his delectable mouth. But that proved nothing, not when I’d already seen a demon alter his entire face. “Huh! Neat trick.”
He came in nearer. I tried to disappear in my pillows. “Seriously. I had them capped.”
“Capped? So people like me won’t know what you are?”
“No.” This close, he smelled of sandalwood and amber. “So I can do this.” He put his hands on the sides of my face and his mouth fastened on mine.
It was deep and hungry and utterly consuming. His lips were velvet, exploring mine, drawing my breath. I could have lived in his kiss for the rest of my life. When he pulled back, a little gasping puff of air escaped my mouth.
And he didn’t have pointed teeth.
Stunned. I was stunned by a kiss. Pervasive?
His hands still cradled my cheeks, and we gazed in each other’s eyes. The only sound was my heavy breathing and the tock of the old carriage clock on the mantle. He looked alien, with his parti-colored metallic hair and gleaming eyes, and incongruous against the backdrop of the pastel greens and fawns of my bedroom. His skin was so smooth; it had an ageless quality. And his eyes were depthless.
He let me go and sat back, and I blinked back to the here and now. He’s a demon, Tiff! I told myself. Don’t let that kiss fool you.
I licked my lips. “If I ask you to leave, will you?”
“Are you sure you want me to, Tiff?”
“Yes.”
He dropped his chin so I couldn’t properly see his face.
“Did you really have your teeth capped so you could kiss me?” I couldn’t resist asking as he got to his feet.
His smile was slow and wicked. “Well, not you in particular.”
And then he was gone.
Damn! Nothing should be able to move so fast!
“If a man kissed me like that I’d be ripping his clothes off, not pissing him off.”
My mouth dropped open and I twisted to look at the corner of the room near the window. Mel stood against the wall next the fireplace, Jack beside her.<
br />
“What were you two in life? Peeping Toms?”
Jack pushed away from the wall. “Did you hear the one about the dead Peeping Tom?”
“Out! Or God help me I will call in an exorcist!”
They headed for the door, noses in the air. “Wait!” I called as a nasty thought hit me. “A guy saunters in, and you don’t warn me?”
Mel put one hand to her hair. “Why would we?”
Puzzled, I rubbed at the headache forming between my brows. “He broke in.”
“He didn’t,” Jack said. “He had a key.” He shared a look with Mel. “He did have a key?”
“Seemed so. He came up the path, the deadbolt opened, he came in, threw the bolt, and trotted upstairs.”
He has a key to my house! Outrage all but overwhelmed me, and it showed, because my roommates backed to the door. “He had a key,” I seethed. “You thought I expected him.”
Jack’s chin went up and down like a yo-yo.
“You mean you didn’t?” Mel asked in a tiny whispering voice.
I threw my hands in the air and fell back on the bed.
I went through the house, checking doors and windows. All closed, all secure. He must have a key, or lock picks, which would surprise me less than a key. I secured the heavy bolts at top and bottom of the back and front doors. Nobody could get those doors open now short of dynamiting them.
If someone really wants in your house, they will find a way, but now Royal would have to break glass to reach those bolts. I’d hear breaking glass.
I got back in bed and snuggled down under my duvet, but in my cool bedroom I felt too hot. Not surprising, the way he got me all riled up. I kicked at the covers, but I had the sheet beneath the duvet tucked in tight. So I had a tantrum.
I got on my knees and hauled the duvet off the bed so it tumbled to the floor in a heap. Then I tried to pull the sheet free. That didn’t work, so I got out of bed and tugged one side out, went around the bed and freed the other side. I dropped it on top of the duvet, and stomped on it.
Wisely, Jack and Mel did not reappear in the room.
Tripping on the duvet, I went to the window. I rested my elbows on the sill, clasped my hands and put my mouth on my knuckles. It was early morning now, and the frosty grass in the backyard glittered in the light of a crescent moon. The fruit trees were almost bare. Poor naked Lindy sat beneath the apple tree, arms holding her bent knees, impervious to the cold but not to her grief.
Lawrence. That was the important thing. Find Lawrence and give his mother the peace she deserved. Forget hair which looked like metallic silk and warm copper-penny eyes. Forget a taut body and manipulative lips. He was a demon. I couldn’t trust him.
With a moan, I dug my fingers in my hair. Unfortunately, where Royal Mortensen was concerned, I couldn’t, apparently, trust myself.
Chapter Eleven
I woke to the smell of frying bacon. And was that sausage?
Hot, sweaty, my braid coming apart, I looked for my Ruger and found it on the bedside table where Royal left it. Not bothering with my robe, I crept from the room and stood at the top of the staircase.
Funny. Where were Jack and Mel? They should be in my bedroom, in a panic, shouting in their whispering voices for me to wake.
I inched down the stairs, cautiously stepping over the one which creaks, gun at the ready. Don’t tell me a burglar will not cook breakfast; you read about it happening all the time. Intruders don’t just break in and steal your stuff nowadays, they eat your food, watch your TV and drink your beer.
I crossed the hall, put my back to the wall, and looked around the doorframe to the kitchen.
I do not believe it! Royal stood at the stove with his back to me, busily stirring in my small nonstick pan with a wooden spoon. My big cast iron skillet sizzled on another burner, and my electric skillet, on the counter, vented steam. The oven was on. Jack and Mel stood behind him as close as they could get. Mel had her hands clasped and jiggled on her feet. Jack held his folded hands to his face in an attitude of prayer.
I marched in. “You again! Mortensen!”
Leaving the spoon in the pot, he spun on his heel and his shoulder went through Jack’s head. Jack staggered to one side and clutched his cranium. “Ah, he got me. I’m dy … ing!”
Mel tittered.
“Mortensen? Royal is easier on the tongue. Try it, Tiff.”
“Mortensen, you - “
“I thought after last night - “
“Nothing significant happened last night, Detective.”
We locked gazes. I gave him my best steely-eyed glare.
A smile twitched the corner of his mouth. “If you say so.”
He turned back to the stove and gave the pot another stir. “Please put your pistol down. You don’t need it and you are making me nervous.”
He didn’t appear nervous. He looked relaxed and confident, at home in my kitchen, wearing the same clothes as last night, except his brown corduroy jacket hung from the peg next the backdoor.
Putting the table between us, I carefully laid the Ruger down. Carefully, because I didn’t engage the safety. I could snatch it up and fire in a second.
If he didn’t take it from my hand again.
I tried reasoning with him. “You have to quit breaking into my house.”
He bent over the stove to sniff the pot, the tail of his long copper-gold hair sliding over one shoulder. “Your security measures are pitiful.”
“Yeah, well, my alarm system appears to be out,” I said, glowering at Jack and Mel.
“I don’t recall signing any contract,” Jack said.
“You don’t have an alarm system,” Royal said.
I didn’t have a retort. I couldn’t say my security measures relied on two dead people, who at the moment were more interested in breakfast than my safety.
“Bacon!” Mel exclaimed. “You never make bacon.”
Because I eat at Audrie’s Family Restaurant if I want bacon. Audrie’s doesn’t burn the bacon, or the sausage, and their eggs don’t end up the texture of leather.
I sat at the table, fiddling with the end of my braid, trying to think up something scathing to say. But a kind of calm settled over me. Morning sun streamed through the window in the backdoor, the kitchen felt warm and steamy, and the smell of bacon and sausage was wonderful. Mel and Jack were either side of Royal like happy, eager kids, chattering about a breakfast they would never sample.
He put his weight on one hip, which drew Mel’s attention to how the fabric of his pants hugged his rear end. She looked at his butt, looked at me and sang a refrain: “Do you see what I see?”
Turning to me, Royal pointed at my old refrigerator, which crouches next the backdoor like a giant wad of pink bubblegum. “Do you like milk with breakfast?”
I shook my head. He looked like a smooth-shaven barbarian. Did demons have hair on their bodies? His arms were hairless. I snuck a look at where his shirt gaped open, at a smooth expanse of lightly-bronzed skin with not a hair in sight. If I closed my eyes, I bet I could imagine sleek warmth beneath my palm.
So I didn’t close my eyes. I didn’t dare.
“You need to air out your living room; it’s musty,” he surprised me by saying.
What the… ? “You snooped through my house?”
He opened the oven door, letting out a blast of heat, and removed a small baking sheet with half a dozen perfectly round, fluffy biscuits. “I spent the night in there.”
As I spluttered, beyond words, he quickly whisked the covers off the skillet and electric skillet, loaded a dish and brought it to the table. Still wordless, I gazed at fried potatoes—the real, homemade kind, not those limp, stringy hash-browns—two eggs over-easy, two slices of bacon, and two biscuits covered in creamy sausage gravy.
“Your favorite,” he announced.
He must have asked at the precinct; I had breakfast with the guys enough times. “You forgot the melted cheese.”
“I will remember next time.”
<
br /> He checked my kitchen clock. “I have to go.” Then he dropped a kiss on my forehead and headed for the backdoor, saying, “I’ll see you later, sweetheart.”
I put my fingers to my forehead. “What the hell! What did you call me?”
Grinning, he grabbed his jacket off the hook and left by the door.
“He’s very domestic, isn’t he,” Mel commented.
“He didn’t make coffee,” Jack provided.
“And he didn’t load the dishwasher,” from Mel.
I momentarily closed my eyes. “You could have said he spent the night in the living room.”
Jack twitched his shoulders. “We didn’t know. We only go in there when you do. You know, those twice-a-year excursions to flick dust from one piece of furniture to the next. No wonder it smells like a tomb.”
“We had no idea till he sauntered out. He left the house for fifteen minutes or so and came back with a sack of groceries,” Mel said. “Then we were … distracted.”
“Instead of alerting me, you hang over him, drooling over breakfast,” I accused.
“The guy let himself in the house as if he had every right to be here!” Jack protested. “Why should we know any different?” He rolled one shoulder. “Anyway, anyone who makes you breakfast can’t be all bad.”
“Honey, I was drooling over a lot more than breakfast,” said Mel. She joined me at the table. “Are you going to eat that, sweetheart?”
I smoldered as I drove downtown. How dare the man come in my house, spend the night and make breakfast in my kitchen! And he thought he was so damned funny with, “I’ll see you later, sweetheart.” I could see him bouncing back in with, “Honey, I’m home!” or some such nonsense.
Forgetting to be angry, I bit down on a snicker - it was kind of funny. And it was a damn fine breakfast.
He couldn’t watch me all the time. I meant to do a little investigating of my own sans Royal Mortensen and I didn’t feel at all guilty for ignoring Mike’s directive. Lawrence’s disappearance was my case; so what if I accidentally forgot to let my so-called partner know what I was doing?
Armed with a copy of Lawrence’s photo, I went to the Swinn’s Supermarket nearest Lindy’s place, because most of the frozen food in her freezer came from there. I felt really awkward as I went from one employee to another and I expected someone to sic a store manager on me. I flashed my consultant’s badge and hoped nobody asked in what capacity I assisted the police department. Nobody asked, nobody called a manager, and nobody recalled seeing Lawrence.