She blinked and shook her head no. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was unexpected. Whatever. His choice, no matter how surprising it was, didn’t matter. Turning, she stepped toward the staircase.
“I’m not following you, by the way,” he said. “After you move your car, I will need to move mine.”
Oh well, that made sense—
She gasped as Dev suddenly moved. One second he was beside her, and the next, he was blocking the steps below. She clutched the vine-covered railing. “How am I supposed to move my car if you’re blocking the stairway? Or do you expect me to go traipsing through your house to get downstairs?”
Even though he was two whole steps below her, he was eye to eye with her. “Do you often traipse through homes?”
“Daily. It’s how I get my workout in.”
“That must be interesting to see.”
“It most definitely is.”
He leaned in suddenly, and Rosie sucked in a sharp breath, unprepared for him to be so damn close to her. She immediately thought of Saturday morning. Him. Her. Their bodies pressed against one another. Was he thinking about that, too?
His dark lashes lifted. “You smell like—”
“If you say something ignorant, I’m seriously going to push you down these steps.”
The blue of his eyes seemed to deepen. “That wouldn’t be very nice, Rosie.”
There was another catch to her breath, because she was pretty confident that was the first time he’d said her name, and in that deep, slightly accented voice of his, it sent an unwanted thrill right through her.
“But what I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted,” Devlin continued. “You smell like vanilla and . . .” He trailed off as if he couldn’t place how she smelled.
Rosie sighed. “Sugar. Brown sugar to be exact. I work at Pradine’s Pralines and went straight from there to Nikki’s place to get her some fresh clothing. You’ve probably never heard of the place—”
“I have. They have amazing pralines.” He tilted his head to the side. “I didn’t know you worked there.”
“It’s been family owned since the beginning and my parents now run it,” she said, noting the flicker of surprise in his eyes. “I can’t picture you eating pralines.”
“You can’t?” One eyebrow rose.
“Yeah, I picture you eating raw vegetables, lots of fat-trimmed steak, and beets.”
“Beets?”
She nodded. “Isn’t that what people eat when they’re in a permanent state of constipation?”
His eyes widened and his mouth went lax. “Did you just suggest I was constipated?”
“That would explain the attitude, wouldn’t it?”
“Then what would explain yours?”
“Mine has nothing to do with what I eat, but it’s affected by who I’m around, Dev.”
He came up a step, crowding her as he now stared down at her. “No one but my brothers call me Dev.”
“Oh I’m sorry? Do I need permission to call you an abbreviated version of your name?”
“You should. After all, that’s what’s appropriate.”
Rosie couldn’t help it. She rolled her eyes so far back in her head, they’d probably get stuck.
“How would you like if I called you Rose?”
“That’s actually a pretty nickname and I wouldn’t mind,” she shot back. “Rosa would make more sense since my first name is Rosalynn.”
“Rosalynn? So Southern,” he murmured in a way that irritated her.
“Okay, I won’t call you Dev, Dev.”
“You just did,” he said dryly.
“How about I just call you Dickhead, then? That sounds about fitting.”
“You already did that.”
“Then that’s perfect. I’ll just—” Her phone suddenly rang from her pocket. She pulled it out and saw that it was Lance calling again. “Excuse me.” She held up her hand, silencing Dev as she answered her phone. “Hello?”
Dev stared at her—no, he gaped at her.
She smirked as Lance said into her ear, “I’ve been calling you all afternoon. What in the world have you been doing? I got news on the Mendez case.”
“I’m sorry. I know. I’ve just been really busy today and right now isn’t a good time.”
“Is something wrong?” Lance asked, concern filing his tone.
“If it wasn’t a good time, why did you answer the phone?” Devlin asked.
“Was that a guy’s voice?” Lance asked as Rosie shushed Devlin.
“Did you just shush me?” they both demanded at the same time.
Rosie clutched her phone. “I didn’t shush you, Lance. I’d never shush you. Look, can I call you back in a little bit? I’m in the middle of a very important argument with Devlin de Vincent over whether or not I can call him a dickhead instead of Dev.”
Devlin’s mouth dropped open, and for a moment she thought he was going to fall over backward. The shock pouring into his expression was the first real hard-core reaction she’d seen from him.
“Devlin de Vincent—the Devlin de Vincent?” Lance sounded like he might fall over, too.
“Yes.” She met Devlin’s stunned stare. “The Devlin de Vincent. So, can I please call you back? Like I imagine most things with him, I don’t think this is going to take long.”
Devlin snapped his mouth shut.
“Uh, yeah. Call me back as soon as you can,” Lance muttered, sounding way confused.
“Thanks, babe.” Rosie ended the call and slipped the phone into her pocket. “You’re still here? I was hoping you’d go ahead and walk down.”
“Who was that?” he demanded.
“The Pope. Can you please move out of the way so I can move my car before your precious truck gets a raindrop on it, even though it looks like it could use a bath?”
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“No,” he repeated, and then he moved in.
They weren’t as close as they’d been on Saturday, but she could see the flecks of green in his blue eyes. Close enough that if she took a deep breath, her chest would brush his, and she knew that would be bad, because as terrible as it was, her body wanted that closeness. Her brain, however, was not on board with her body. Her brain was seriously considering the consequences of pushing him lightly down the stairs.
“I want you to listen to everything I say, because I will not ever repeat myself,” he said, his voice so low, so soft that she could barely hear him. “I should not have to explain how incredibly rude it is to answer the phone in the middle of a conversation, one in which you’re insulting the other person, but then to shush me? Even as a child, I was not shushed.”
Her heart rate tripled. “I guess there’s a first for everything?”
“You’re not listening. If you were, you wouldn’t be speaking.”
Rosie narrowed her eyes. “I’m listening.”
“Good. Silence must be a new thing for you,” he continued, and when she opened her mouth, he placed his finger over her lips. So shocked by the contact, she was effectively silenced. “I am not done, Rosalynn.”
Oh dear.
His thumb curled under her chin and his touch was oddly gentle in comparison to the hard line of his jaw. Then he dipped his head, bringing his mouth within an inch of hers.
Oh my good God, was he going to kiss her?
That would be a sharp turn in events, so sharp she just stood there as a hot flush swept over and an acute heaviness settled into her breasts and flowed down to her stomach and lower, much lower.
Wait. Bad Rosie. Bad. Bad. Bad.
She did not want him to kiss her. He was a dickhead douchebag of the highest order!
But yep, her nipples were hard, and yep, something was wrong with her, and nope, he did not kiss her.
“Being shushed was a first for me and it will be the last,” he said, definitely not kissing her. “But most importantly? The insinuation you made on the phone about most things not lasting long with
me? I can assure you, that is not the case.” His finger slid over her lips, eliciting a gasp from her. “That takes longer than I’m betting you can last and you’d be begging me to stop while pleading with me to keep going the whole time. I can assure you, no one would ever fuck you longer or harder.”
Oh.
My.
God.
Rosie was actually speechless. Utterly shocked into real, honest to goodness silence while her body and mind engaged in a full-fledged war with one another. Her mind was telling her to be offended, like kick him in the balls offended, and her body had liquefied as molten lava swept through her veins, sparking to life a fire—a need she’d never experienced before, not even with Ian.
Devlin dragged his finger back over her bottom lip, tugging on it before lowering his hand. “But that, my dear, is something you’ll never have the honor of experiencing with me, because the mere idea of me even thinking about fucking you is laughable.”
His words were like having a bucket of cold water dumped over her head. The fire was doused in a heartbeat. What he said . . . that was, wow. . . . Never in her life had anyone ever spoken to her like that. Ever. A horrible messy knot of emotion plugged her throat. His words stung more than they should, probably because she was getting close to that time of the month and was overly emotional.
Holding her wide-eyed gaze, he turned sideways and stepped aside. “Now you may go move your car.”
A thousand retorts rose to the tip of her tongue. She could out-shade him to the point he was eclipsed by the shade she could throw in his direction, but he . . . he wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth a single second of her snarkiness or her time.
He wasn’t worth anything to her.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to serve it right back at him, because she was not the kind of woman to let a man stand there and talk to her like that.
Pushing the knot in her throat down, she held his gaze even though her eyes burned. “I think you misspoke. I think you meant to say that fucking me is an honor that you know you’d never be worthy of and that is why it would never happen, Dev.”
Something flickered across his face that looked an awful lot like respect—reluctant respect, but she didn’t give a flying chupacabra’s ass what Devlin de Vincent thought or felt.
Slipping past him, she walked down the steps without looking back and without saying another word.
She was a lot of things. A little out there. Definitely weird. Sometimes irresponsible and she probably drank too much wine and ate way too many sweets, but she’d never been a doormat for any man to wipe his feet on, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to become one now.
Chapter 9
“What in the world were you doing with a de Vincent?” That was the first question Lance asked when Rosie met up with him at Jilly’s place. He’d been sitting out on the porch, waiting for her.
Lance was a couple years younger, and with his head full of auburn hair and big brown eyes, he had a perpetual baby face. The man would probably still look like he was in his early twenties even when he was in his forties and he really was a good guy.
A good man who’d had a rough run of things after returning home from a tour in Afghanistan. It wasn’t a topic he talked about often, but Rosie knew he’d done something along the lines of emergency medicine when with the army. Knowing that, she figured the man had seen things that no human should ever have to witness.
His girlfriend of several years had apparently gotten involved with someone else without telling him. It hadn’t been exactly easy for him to adapt to civilian life and finding a job had been even harder. Combined with everything he’d experienced overseas and the life that seemed to have moved on without him once he returned home, he’d had a tough go at things at first.
But Lance was proof of human resilience. He got knocked down several times, but he picked himself up and here he was.
Rosie shifted the strap of her purse as she slowly climbed the steps. “You remember Nikki, right? My friend from the University of Alabama? She’s dating one of the brothers—Gabriel. She was over at their house and I was visiting her,” she said, leaving out most of the details since it wasn’t widely known that Nikki had been involved in what happened with Parker. Not that she didn’t trust Lance. What happened wasn’t her story to tell. “And Devlin was there. He’s a bit of a . . . dickhead, so I was arguing with him.”
Lance’s reddish-brown brows lifted. “Okay. First, I cannot believe you were at the de Vincent house, and second, you were arguing with Devlin de Vincent.”
Rosie shrugged like she didn’t care, but it felt forced. As stupid as it sounded because Devlin was a virtual stranger to her, but she did care, because she couldn’t fathom how or why someone would be such an ass for no good reason. Sure, she wasn’t particularly nice to him when he came to her apartment, but he’d acted like he hadn’t known who she was and he’d been rude to her the moment he stepped through her door. The man she’d met in the cemetery, while distant, had been polite. That wasn’t the Devlin she had now seen twice.
It was like the man wanted people to hate him.
“Believe it,” she said, pushing thoughts of Devlin aside as the strap of her purse started to inch down her arm again.
“What was the house like?” he asked, and Rosie knew why he was asking. Like her, Lance knew all about the legends and rumors that surrounded the de Vincent place.
“I didn’t get to see much of it, but there was something super weird.” She told him about the ivy growing everywhere. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
“All over?” Interest filled his brown eyes.
“All over the entire exterior,” she confirmed.
“Hell, that is insane.” Lance scratched his fingers through his messy, curly hair. “So, do you think you can get us access to the house? Or Nikki could?”
Rosie barked out a short laugh. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?” He frowned.
She caught the purse before it slipped right off her arm. Jesus, she hated this purse with its short straps, but damn it, the patchwork fabric was so cute. “Besides the fact that the de Vincents are notoriously private, I’m pretty confident Devlin loathes me.”
“Loathes you? How in the world can anyone hate you?” He rose as she reached the top step and draped his arm over her shoulders. “You’re fucking awesome.”
Rosie laughed softly. “I know.” She didn’t want to spend another moment thinking about Devlin. “So, what’s the update with the Mendez family?”
Sliding his arm off her shoulders, he opened the door for her. “I’ll let Jilly give you the details.”
Jilly was in the narrow living room, on the phone with her girlfriend by the sound of the one-sided hushed argument and her brisk pace in front of the leaning tower of books. Those two argued over everything, from what they were having for dinner to if a residual haunting counted as a real haunting or not, and the only thing they both agreed on was the fact there was no one else for them. They were complete opposites, from the way they looked and dressed, all the way down to Jilly being a vegetarian and Liz considering herself a meat connoisseur.
But Rosie doubted she knew two people who loved each other more than them.
She dropped into the old armchair as Jilly turned, throwing up her free hand. “You know I love you, babe, but I have to get off the phone. Rosie and Lance are here—yes.” Jilly rolled her eyes. “Liz says hi.”
“Hi,” Rosie replied, grinning at Lance. “Is she working?”
“Yes. She’ll be here soon. What?” Jilly whipped around and picked up her glass of wine. “Liz will be here in forty minutes. I’m hanging up.” There was a pause, and her face softened. “You know I miss you. I always miss you, now shut up and get back to work so you can actually get off work on time for once.
“Do you guys want anything to drink? No? Perfect.” Jilly tossed her phone onto the couch, where it bounced off a fluffy chenille thr
ow. “Glad to see you’re still alive, Rosie.”
Rosie arched a brow. “I miss a few phone calls and you guys assume I’m dead?”
“It’s New Orleans.” She tucked short dark strands behind her ear. “Anything is possible.”
“That’s a wee bit of an exaggeration,” Rosie commented.
“Gonna have to agree with Rosie on that.” Lance sat on the arm of her chair.
“Of course you do. You love her.” Jilly smiled sweetly.
Rosie stiffened while Lance flipped her off.
Jilly ignored him. “Anyway, I did speak to Preston Mendez, and like he’d asked of us, I haven’t showed his wife what we caught on camera yet.”
Preston had wanted to vet anything we caught on film before it was showed to his wife, and their team had respected that even though Rosie felt Maureen should know. She got that he didn’t want to upset his wife, but she was eventually going to have to see the film.
“Needless to say, he was quite disturbed by what was caught on film Saturday night,” she continued, taking a drink of her wine. “He didn’t hear the bang, but he did wake up when the baby started crying.”
“Is he going to let us stay the night in there?” Lance asked.
Jilly shook her head. “He’s still talking it over with his wife, but I think they’re going to let us. I’ve only explained a hundred million times to him why we’d be able to gain more evidence if we were able to do an overnight.”
“In the meantime, he should at least let us set up a couple of EVP recorders in the house,” Rosie suggested.
“Agreed. But people are weird when it comes to knowing there’s something in their house recording their conversations. You know this.” Jilly sat on the couch. “But kiddos, it’s time for me to tell you something really weird. Something I discovered while talking to Preston earlier, and it’s either a really bizarre coincidence or it’s fate.”
Rosie glanced at Lance. “Do you have any idea of what she is talking about?”
“Not really.”
“He doesn’t know, but when he came over earlier, he said when he talked to you on the phone, you were with a de Vincent. Is that true?” Jilly was practically trembling with excitement or she’d drunk one of those five-hour energy drinks again.
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