Bad Girls Don't
Page 6
Angel looked at the card as if it represented all the evil in the universe. “Money brings trouble.”
“Not having money also brings trouble. Like the electric company threatening to discontinue service.”
“We don’t need much.”
“Maybe not, but electricity is nice.”
“It starts with electricity and ends with gas-guzzling SUVs and designer watches.”
“I’m not buying an SUV or a watch. I’m buying the Tivoli Theater.”
“What?”
“The movie theater downstairs. I’m going to buy it. And restore and reopen it.”
Angel appeared speechless. Skye knew the condition wouldn’t last long.
“A movie theater?” Angel said.
“That’s right.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Angel sniffed a moment before rushing back to the stove. “My sauce!”
“Are you and Angel playing tag in the kitchen?” Toni demanded as she joined them. She’d traded her customary tiara for a fairy wand filled with sparkling stars. Her feet were bare and she was wearing a two-piece swimsuit with little fish on it.
“No, we’re celebrating by dancing.” Skye scooped her up in her arms and cradled her so she could press a raspberry kiss onto Toni’s bare tummy.
Toni shrieked with laughter. “That tickles!”
“No.” Skye stared down at her with mock disbelief. “You mean this tickles?”
She gave her daughter another loud, smacking raspberry kiss, right on her belly button.
“Yes!”
“I had no idea it might tickle. In that case . . . I’ll do it again!”
Toni wriggled herself free, giggling gleefully as Skye chased her into the living room and around the round red couch, a castoff found at the thrift shop.
Always a fan of multitasking, Skye spoke to Angel while playing with Toni. “You’ve run a bunch of businesses, Angel. I’m just following in your footsteps. What do you think?”
“That it appears we’re about to embark on another adventure.” Angel’s expression remained worried as she reached out to hug Skye. “Maybe I should consult the tarot cards and runes.”
“You don’t have to. My mind is already made up.”
Two hours later, Skye’s mind was still racing. She read Toni her favorite Olivia the Pig story and put her to bed. Since Skye never wore a watch, she had no idea what time it was. She only knew that she was too wound up to relax.
“I’m just gonna go get some fresh air,” Skye told Angel. “Can you stay a bit longer?”
“Sure.” Angel looked up from the scarf she was crocheting. “Everything okay? You haven’t lost the lottery ticket already, have you?”
“Not unless it’s grown legs and walked out of the freezer.” Skye often stashed important papers there. “I won’t be long.”
“The last time you said that, you came back with a million dollars.”
Skye just grinned. “Who knows what I’ll come back with this time?”
The August night was hot, the muggy air hitting the skin left bare by her blue crop-top and black cotton shorts. Like most of her wardrobe, she’d gotten the items from the thrift shop run by Sister Mary.
Rock Creek didn’t have a fancy town square like Serenity Falls did, so Skye couldn’t go jogging or strolling through some artistically arranged flower garden in the dark.
Instead, she skipped over the cracked sidewalk and did a sassy salsa dance with the paint-peeling lamppost on the corner. She had to celebrate. Do a happy Snoopy dance. A boogie. Some hip-hop. A waltz that would make Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers proud. Their movies had probably been shown at the Tivoli in the thirties. All glamour and glitz.
Skye twirled and swirled her way down the deserted street until . . . smack! She was stopped midstep by a brick wall.
Wait, not brick. Human. Male. Smells good.
Strong hands. Broad chest.
Her nose was flattened against his shirt, her lips pressed against the warm cotton.
Her inner diva came to life. The one that missed having a man in her bed.
“You okay?”
His voice rumbled, reverberating through her body. Wait a second. This wasn’t a man. This was the cop! She quickly stepped back. Nathan wasn’t wearing his uniform. Jeans and a plain blue T-shirt made him look entirely too . . . good.
Better than good. Great enough to haul into bed.
Not that she’d ever do that. Not with an uptight lawman like him. She might be bad, but she wasn’t stupid.
“What are you doing?” Her voice sounded sharp.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” He sounded entirely too laid-back.
“I was dancing. Some law against that?”
“I’m off duty.”
“I’m buying the Tivoli Theater.” She had no idea where the words came from or why she was blurting them out to him, of all people.
“Really.” His tone deleted any sign of a question mark at the end of the glaringly doubtful word.
“Yes, really.”
“I thought you didn’t have enough money to pay your outstanding tickets yourself.”
“I didn’t. But things change.”
“In a few hours?”
“Absolutely. They can change in the blink of an eye.”
Nathan knew that only too well. One minute he’d been happily married, the next he was listening to the call telling him that his wife had died at the scene of a car accident.
“Yeah, I know.”
Skye stared at him. Not the way she’d looked before, when he’d arrested her. Then those green eyes of hers had been full of fire and disdain. Now they were speculative. Thoughtful.
“Yeah, you do,” she said softly.
He stiffened. “Have people been talking?”
“Huh?”
“About me?”
“They tried,” she cheerfully acknowledged, “but I refused to listen to them.”
Nathan didn’t know what to say to that. This woman had a way of doing that to him. Knocking him off balance. Like the way she’d done when she’d smacked into him while waltzing down the street like some escapee from Singin’ in the Rain.
He had to admit she did look awesome in those shorts and cropped top. Her bare skin had been smooth and soft beneath his fingertips when he’d caught her.
He had to say something. He couldn’t just stand here with his jaw hanging open. And it had to be something coherent.
While he was trying to come up with a sentence that fit his criteria, she continued right on speaking. “Some things I prefer to discover for myself.”
“Huh?” Smooth, Thornton. Real smooth.
“You can’t take other people’s opinions about things. You have to form your own impressions. Like when I smacked into you. You want to know what my first impression was?” She didn’t bother pausing to wait for his answer. “That you smelled good. Well, first I thought you were a brick wall. But one that smelled good.”
“I took a shower.” Brilliant. You and James Bond . . . so good with the ladies. Gag me now. Before I say something else stupid.
“You used soap.”
“Yeah.” What kind of comment was that? Of course he was gonna use soap when he took a shower.
“No aftershave. You don’t need it. You smell good enough without it. Did you know that the sense of smell is one of the most powerful senses we have?”
Nathan made a noncommittal grunt that could have meant anything. It was his preferred means of communication under normal circumstances. Not that anything about his run-ins with Skye fell under the heading of “normal.”
“Most people think we only have five senses. Sight.” She paused to bat eyelashes at him. “Smell.” She sniffed with that cute nose of hers. “Sound.” Her voice went all soft and sexy. “Taste.” She licked her lips. “Touch.” She ran her index finger down from her throat to her collar-bone. “But we actually have six.”
“Six?” His voice sounded rusty.
Was she deliberately trying to seduce him? Two could play that game.
“You mean like this?” He ran his index finger down her arm and back up again.
He’d meant to prove a point, but instead he’d just activated his body’s launch sequence with amazing speed. Erection begun . . .
Nathan tried to focus on her reaction instead of his own. She could have been outraged. Angry. Disinterested.
But not her. Her eyes widened. So did her smile. “Yeah, just like that. Or maybe a little more slowly . . .”
She swirled her fingers down his arm, her finger dancing arousing him more than any lap dance had in his single days.
“Right. Slowly.” He repeated her movement, adding a few seductive moves of his own. Caressing the inside of her elbow made her eyes go all dark and her lips part. “Slowly is good.”
“Slowly is great,” she murmured before grabbing a handful of his T-shirt and tugging him closer.
Her lips met his head-on.
There was nothing slow about the kiss. It has hot and fast. Open mouths and tangled tongues.
Then it was over.
She scooted backward. “Why’d you do that?”
“Me? You were the one—”
“Yes, I was. Bad idea.”
“Felt damn good.”
“Yes, it did.” Skye dazedly touched her lips before frowning. “But still a bad idea.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed,” she repeated.
Nathan nodded and then walked away, leaving Skye behind, reminding herself once more that while she might be bad, she sure wasn’t stupid.
True, her sister . . . her half sister Julia wouldn’t agree. But then, Julia had never agreed with the various paths Skye had chosen to take in life.
Julia had never actually called them stupid. She didn’t have to. She had a way of looking at you that made her thoughts real clear. As if Skye had a giant L plastered in the middle of her forehead. Loser, loser, loser.
Not that Skye cared. Not really. Okay, maybe just a little bit. Big deal.
The bottom line was that Skye and Julia were total opposites. They didn’t even share the same father. Julia’s biological father was some capitalist billionaire. That bit of recently revealed info explained a lot, as far as Skye was concerned.
It explained why they were so different. Why Julia was so prim and proper. So conservative. So locked into worrying what other people thought. And Skye . . . wasn’t.
Skye also wasn’t going to exchange saliva with an uptight by-the-book cop like Nathan. Even if he was a damn fine kisser. Not that their kiss had lasted long enough . . .
No, don’t go there. No experimenting with this man. No wasn’t a concept that Skye dealt with very well. She hoped that making Nathan forbidden territory didn’t just entice her into wanting him even more.
“I’m worried about Skye,” Angel told Tyler later that night as they sat beneath the stars on a park bench in Serenity Falls’ quaint town square.
Clasping his hand in hers always made her feel better, but tonight that wasn’t working. And, okay, yes, Tyler was still a man of mystery, but Angel didn’t care. She knew enough about him to know she loved him with every fiber of her being.
Since she was now a fiber artist—designing, spinning, crocheting, and knitting hats, scarves, and sweaters with a funky twist—she’d started visualizing various threads running through her life.
Angel had followed many convoluted threads in her fifty years. She liked to think they’d all led her here, to this wooden bench in Serenity Falls nestled beside Tyler.
Not that she was a fan of the conservative little town. The place was entirely too anal for her tastes. But she’d found Tyler here, so she couldn’t complain too much.
Besides, she was stuck here house-sitting until her oldest daughter Julia returned from her adventures on the back of bad boy Luke Maguire’s Harley.
Tyler still hadn’t verbally responded to her comment about being worried about Skye. But he’d started rubbing his thumb along the back of her hand in that soothing way he had, as if to reassure her that things would work out.
So much had changed since Angel had blown into town with Skye and Toni almost a year ago. Pivotal moments became snapshots in her inner scrapbook. Her first meeting with Tyler beside the pond behind the library, her first sighting of him Rollerblading to cope with his insomnia late at night, her guilt at not telling Julia about her biological father.
“It’s money,” Angel murmured, reaching up to touch the amethyst crystal she wore around her neck. Amethyst was said to have a calming effect on the emotions and to increase perception and creative insight. All attributes she could use about now.
“What’s money?”
“The reason I’m worried about my daughter.”
“So this is about Adam?”
“No, it’s about Skye.”
“I don’t understand. Is she jealous about Julia having a rich father?”
“No way,” Angel said. Then she frowned. “At least, I don’t think so. We’ve never really discussed it. Maybe we should. Anyway, that’s not what I was talking about.”
Tyler just waited.
“Skye was almost arrested yesterday.”
“And that’s why you’re worried?”
Angel shook her head. “Oh no, I was actually very proud of her. We even staged a sit-in to protest the way she was being treated.”
“How was she being treated?”
Now Angel patted Tyler’s hand. “You sounded so lawyerly there for a moment.”
“Shoot me now,” Tyler muttered.
“It still hurts you, doesn’t it? Thinking about your former life as a prosecutor.”
“I’m not the same man anymore.”
“You’re a much better man.”
“Most people wouldn’t think that scraping by as a handyman doing odd jobs around town is better.”
Angel rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “Ah, but you already know I’m not most people.”
“Yeah, that’s one of the things I love about you.”
Tyler said he loved things about her, but he’d only said he loved her once. She told herself it didn’t matter. No way was she rocking the cosmic boat too much at this point.
“But getting back to Skye,” Tyler prompted her.
“Yeah, well, it turns out she has a bunch of unpaid tickets from the West Coast.”
“Not good.”
“Apparently not. But no reason to put her in handcuffs.”
“They handcuffed her?”
“The sheriff did. Of course, she slipped right out of them, just like Sister Mary taught her. But that’s another story. Anyway, we eventually got the ticket thing sorted out, with Owen loaning her the money to pay them off.”
“Owen the funeral director guy?”
Angel nodded. “To show him her appreciation, Skye bought him some of those instant lottery tickets. Apparently, one of them was a winner and he insisted on giving it back to her.”
“Generous of him. So how much did she win?”
“A lot.” Angel nervously plucked at the floaty, tie-dyed Indian-cotton skirt she wore.
“A hundred?”
Angel could forgive him for starting low, since to her a hundred dollars was a lot of money. “A million.”
Tyler almost choked.
Angel patted him on the back and nodded. “I know. It’s a lot of money. Not to someone like Adam, maybe . . .”
“Did you return his call yet?”
Angel shook her head.
“Why are you avoiding him? Are you afraid that if you talk to him, your old feelings for him will come back?”
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br /> “Of course not!”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
“A lot of things. Global warming, mercury in fish, the disappearance of the rain forest, schoolchildren getting obese from soft drinks in schools.”
“Do you hold Adam responsible for all those things?”
“Well, he is a capitalist pig.”
“With whom you had a child.”
“A long time ago.”
“It’s still a bond the two of you have.”
Angel shifted in her seat. “I wish you wouldn’t put it that way.”
“Why not?”
“Because it makes it seem as if . . .”
“As if the two of you had sex?” he demanded.
Totally stunned by Tyler’s comment, Angel leapt to her feet and shouted, “I haven’t had sex in thirty years!”
Chapter Five
“You haven’t had sex in thirty years?” Tyler rose to his feet, but took his time doing it. “What do you call what we did last night?”
“I meant that I haven’t had sex with Adam in thirty years.” Angel’s voice was much calmer and a lot quieter now.
Julia might be out of town, but she’d have a hissy fit if she heard via the grapevine that her mother was yelling about sex in the middle of Serenity Falls.
Skye wouldn’t care.
Angel’s two daughters were polar opposites, which often left Angel feeling like she was being torn apart in the middle.
And now she had Tyler acting weird. “Where is this coming from?”
He just shrugged.
That shrug was the last straw. “I hate it when you do that. I read your gesture as you telling me that I’m not worthy of a reply.”
He looked at her blankly. “What gesture?”
“Your shrug.”
This time he rolled his eyes instead.
“That’s not a real good substitute,” Angel informed him. “Just talk to me. Tell me why you’re so manic about Adam all of a sudden.”
“It’s not all of a sudden,” Tyler said softly.
“Well, you haven’t acted like this before.”
“How am I supposed to compete with one of the richest guys on the planet?”