by Lainey Reese
“Yeah, they grew up together.”
“I’ll need to ask her some questions,” he said and looked after the way she’d gone.
“Hey? That can wait. She’s not—”
The agent held up a hand in a calming gesture. “Of course, not tonight. I’m not a moron. Only thinking out loud, Sheriff.”
Derek scrubbed both hands over his face, felt the day’s stubble grate his palms like sandpaper. “Sorry. On edge. It’s been a day.”
“To say the least.”
Jessica returned with Max’s order, and the two men dug in without further speaking.
Chapter 15
Jax worked on the quarterlies for the local hardware store and wondered how the sweet elderly couple who owned and ran it had managed to stay in business before they hired him. Their books were a mess. Half their receipts were missing, there were handwritten IOUs from people in lieu of a credit line, and a snarled mess of records from their ancient cash register that never tallied up. He scrubbed two-handed at his face and told himself all he needed was another cup of coffee, and then he’d get through this mess. Caffeine fixed everything.
A knock at his door had him veering off from where the coffee beckoned and heading for the front office instead. He had a receptionist, but it was her lunch break. He usually locked up for the hour she was away from her desk and let his phone service man the calls so he could work uninterrupted, but since he was up anyway, he figured he might as well answer it.
“Hello, how can I help you today?” Jax eyed the stranger in front of him. The guy looked like he just walked off the set of Men in Black. He had the requisite black suit and tie with the starched white shirt and even wore the shades to complete the ensemble. “Did another Arquilian prince get assassinated?”
“It’s all right. We found the galaxy on Orion’s belt,” he responded without missing a beat or cracking a smile. Jax liked him immediately. “I’m Agent Max Shimmer, FBI. I’d like to ask you a few questions if you’ve got the time?”
“Whoa.” Jax’s expression went blank. “Sure. Come in. What’s this about?”
“I just have some follow-up questions for you. I’m picking up where the sheriff left off on the cases of the murdered young women.”
“Oh?” Jax’s mind scrambled. It had been tedious enough dealing with Derek’s loosely veiled questions yesterday. Derek and he had grown up together, but he’d always been Luke’s friend more than his, and Jax could never quite shake the sense that Derek still saw him as the metal-head who ran off with the quarterback’s girl. Now he had to go through it all again with Agent Hollywood? “I told him everything he wanted to know.” But he stepped aside and motioned him in with a warm smile, even as his mind went into cold lockdown.
“I won’t take long,” the agent told him as he followed Jax into the office. “You know the drill. My stop here is just a formality.”
Formality, my ass, Jax thought. His hair was a natural color, his piercings were all removed, and he kept his tats covered. And let’s not forget to mention the fact that he was a lawyer now on top of all the rest. Yet here he stood, facing another law enforcement official anyway. Resentment boiled on a low fire in his belly; no matter how many layers of respectability he slapped on, this town was forever going to see him as the bad guy.
“I’m really not expecting anything new. I just like to familiarize myself with the whole case once I’ve taken one over. Go through all his steps before I start taking my own.” He smiled genially. “Shouldn’t take long.”
Jax ached to punch the guy right in his pearly white smile.
“So, according to my notes, you were away on January seventeenth when the first victim was discovered?” He made a show of looking through his notebook, but Jax wasn’t fooled. He’d bet his whole practice that the feebie had every detail in that worn brown folder memorized by heart. The note checking was a prop meant to put Jax at ease. “What me, a threat? Why, I’m just a bumbling fool in a suit who can’t even remember the poor dead girls’ names or the dates they died.” He wasn’t dumb.
Jax let the fire in him cool, icing down his rage the way he had been doing since he was a kid. He could let the fires burn later, let the animal in him roar where he was safe from prying eyes. Now, he only smiled wider and pulled out his own “notes,” even though he knew every answer to every question the guy was going to ask by heart. He’d played this game with the police a long time now, and he’d found the ploys they used on him worked just as well on them.
Luke sat shoulder-to-shoulder with his son on the dock. He’d dragged the boy out before dawn despite his grumbling and, with thermos and breakfast sandwiches in hand, headed for the lake. This is what his father had done with him every time they needed a heart-to-heart, and Luke continued the tradition with Logan.
Kid was onto him though and stayed stoically—stubbornly—quiet as he fished. Only stared at where his line disappeared into the water and sipped and ate as mechanically as a robot.
“You know, the first time I saw your mom, I thought she was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen.”
Logan’s expression hardened. “Dad. Don’t.”
“Now, don’t go clamming up on me. Hear me out.” Luke stiffened his resolve when he saw his son’s eyes well with tears. It only served to sting his conscience and underline his intent. He cupped his work-roughened hand on the dark hair that was so like his own, marveling at how much smaller his hand looked now that Logan was grown than it had when he was a kid. When one of those welling tears slipped free, Luke used his thumb to brush it away. Grown or not, this was his baby, and nothing pierced his heart like seeing his kid in pain.
“You know, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since I saw her in town. And I think that maybe I did wrong by you.”
Logan’s head whipped around. “No, Dad,” Logan protested. “This isn’t on you. She left, not you.”
“I know she did,” Luke said, gave his son’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, and then picked up his rod when he saw the tip dip indicating a bite. “And that’s on her, I agree. I’m not disputing that. But it occurred to me last night”—as he’d laid helpless in his own bed listening to his son cry—“that I coulda done more to help you with that than I did. I never talked about her.”
He took a deep breath, reeled the fish in with practiced ease, and owned his part in his son’s pain. “Because talking about her—and Jax—was too hard for me, I never stopped to think what not talking about her would do to you.” He fed the hefty trout he’d caught onto his stringer with the two others they reeled in so far then baited his hook for another go. “See, I stopped thinking about her. About them. It was self-preservation, and now that I can see the pain you’re in, I wish I hadn’t been such a selfish bastard about it.”
As his son sniffed and drug a sleeve under his nose, Luke cast his line and watched it, letting it and himself settle before he continued. “I’m sorry as hell for that, son. Only thing I can tell you is I didn’t know how wrong that was until I came face-to-face with her in that street. In my head, she was still this frivolous and spoiled teenager who cheated on me with my best friend then ran out in the middle of the night.”
“So?” Logan reeled in and recast. Something he did when he was stressed instead of letting the bait sit. “It’s what happened. Don’t sweat it, Dad. You and the grands gave me all I needed. Fuck her.” He recast again, and Luke’s heart about cracked when his son’s chin wobbled.
“The thing is… I never stopped to think about what that must have cost her. She was just as much a kid as I was, a year younger even, but where your grands were great, her folks weren’t. Since the day she left, I’ve only ever considered the damage she caused by leaving us. Never once did I stop to think about the damage she suffered that drove her to leave. Hell, Logan, since I saw her again, it’s all I can think about now. Plus, it was almost twenty years ago. Back then, we didn’t know shit about things like postpartum depression. Who’s to say that didn’t have a hand in this?
”
There it was. The goodness and compassion he was searching for loosened his son’s shoulders, and Logan finally let his line sink. “I guess. But that doesn’t explain why she stayed away.”
“No, son, it doesn’t,” Luke agreed, “but I figure neither of us are ever gonna get the answer to that question if we don’t ask.” When Logan’s back stiffened yet again and he started to shake his head, Luke held up a hand in the symbol of surrender. “But I didn’t bring you out here to talk you into seeing her.”
“You didn’t?” Logan’s surprise was evident.
“No. You’re a man, been one since you were about sixteen, and fully capable of making your own choices. You got a goodness in you, son. A goodness I admire, and the way I figure it, if I had spent a little more time thinking about you instead of my busted heart where she was concerned, maybe you wouldn’t be making the same choice right now.” He took a deep breath, like he was bracing to dive into the lake in front of them. “So, I’m going to sit here and tell you all the things I shoulda told you as you were growing up. The good things about the girl who carried you inside her. The way her laugh was like birdsong, and like the way, once she found out how much I liked tomatoes, she was always finding new ways to fix ‘em for me. You know she loves dogs? When she was about four months along with you, we were driving down Dixon Road and came across this mangy pup, and she barely let me stop the car before she was out her door like a shot—”
“I remember Dixon!” Logan’s eyes widened, and in his expression, Luke saw the rise of hope, and the easing in his heart told him he’d made the right choice to do this. “I loved that old hound.”
“So did she. She loved all animals. You know she saved a chipmunk once. It’d gotten caught by one of the barn cats, and Lord that girl was fearless as she battled to save its little life. I told her to let it go. Poor thing looked like a goner to me once she wrestled it free. And she wasn’t in much better shape. You know how wild those cats can be. But she refused to give up and even fashioned a little splint for its broken leg. She was proud as can be the day she set it back in its tree. That damn chipmunk stuck close too, and I can’t tell you how many mornings I’d watch her sit on the porch with her fruit smoothies as that little guy climbed all over her, looking for the nuts she hid in her pockets for him. A pretty smile on her face and giggling like the schoolgirl she was every time it found one.”
So the morning went. As the sun rose across the lake, turning the sky and water every color of the rainbow, Luke told his son the good memories. Everything he could remember about the beautiful young girl who’d stolen his heart before she’d broken it. And felt healing come, not just for his son as he’d intended, but in himself as well. Another fish bit, this time on Logan’s line, who reeled it in while Luke kept talking. Yeah, he thought, it’s going to be a good day.
“I feel like an idiot,” Jax complained for what felt like the hundredth time.
“You don’t look like one” came Kiki’s reply, but he didn’t believe her this time any more than he had all the others. He had no idea how she accomplished it, but one minute he had been getting ready to head back to his much neglected office and his other clients, and then the next, she had him stripped of his jacket and vest, his shirt wide open, and posing for her on the porch swing.
“I feel like a damn fool.” His complaint fell on deaf ears this time; Kiki didn’t even look up from her sketchpad. For a long moment, Jax forgot about his discomfort and lost himself in watching her work. She was just as mesmerizing curled up in the rocking chair with a pencil behind her ear as she was wielding that blowtorch of hers. There were dark purple tips on the spiky ends of her hair that he never noticed before. Tinker Bell had nothing on the pixie before him, he mused. With her slightly turned-up button nose, her perfectly bowed lips, and eyes as big and dewy as an anime character’s, Jax wouldn’t have been surprised to find out she had wings hidden under those coveralls.
“Don’t move,” she uttered, her eyes scouring his face as if she were memorizing it. “Don’t even breathe.” She ripped the page she’d been laboring over and flung it to the floor. “Where has that look been for the last hour? God, you’re delicious!” she exclaimed, her hands flying over the next page even as her eyes stayed glued to his face. “I am going to sculpt this,” she declared, her small white teeth playing with the jeweled hoop that pierced through her bottom lip. Jax felt something animalistic stir low in his belly. “God, yes. Just like that. Holy shit are you sexy.” Jax would have laughed had he walked in on a scene like this. But he wasn’t on the outside looking in; he was in this with her. He felt as much a part of her art at that moment as if they were creating together. He felt her passion; he felt the need, that spark of creating something out of nothing, and it turned him the fuck on.
They were lost in the moment together. The outside world might as well have been going up in flames for all they cared. What was happening between them certainly felt like the world was engulfed in flames. Kiki stuffed her pencil between her teeth, uncurled from her slouch, and planted both feet on the floor to face him fully. Instead of using the pencil still caught in her mouth, Kiki pulled a charcoal one from behind her ear and began to sketch with it. Jax knew his eyes were devouring her, knew she could see every bit of what he was feeling.
“Lie back.” He barely recognized her voice; it was darker, raspy, and he felt it like a stroke on his cock as he slowly slid back and followed her instructions. “Leave the shirt on, but open it wider. Now, off one shoulder, not that one, the one with those gorgeous tats. A little more. Yes. Fuck yes,” she mumbled, her fingers moving over her pad like she was caressing a lover. “Sprawl back, more. Kick one le—yes! God, that’s perfect. Now, cup your cock.” Again, instead of laughing, he knew what she wanted, felt it, and saw in his head what she was looking for. His hand trailed from his collar, down his abs—which she’d had him flexing for hours so they were pronounced—straight over his hip, and then with deliberate slowness, he spread his fingers and cupped the top of his thigh just under his straining erection.
“God, you are so fucking sexy. Like Bond meets Beckham with all those rippling muscles and tats. And all wrapped up underneath a million-dollar suit. I think I just came.” If she said that under any other circumstances, he would have thought she was joking, but at this moment, he almost believed her—and the knowledge made him feral. Kiki made a sound he somehow knew she made during sex, and his hips pumped reflexively. With another sex sound, Kiki ripped off another page and started on the next, this time sitting cross-legged between his feet. For what had to be the millionth time, Jax was mesmerized. Hands as small as a child’s flew over the rough-textured paper, leaving streaks of darkly bold black across it as though in random. A smudge here, another streak or two there, and then her entire hand streaking over it, and like magic, he began to form, his indolent image coming into focus like an apparition from the mists.
Details began to sharpen and draw the eye. Kiki captured the insanely animalistic emotion he was feeling perfectly. She’d even drawn his eyes with such detail and depth they looked on the verge of blinking. She drew his groin next; he watched her eyes trace his cock while her fingers brought what she saw to life.
“Oh for God’s sake!” Like a bucket of ice water, Luke’s voice splashed into their bubble and burst it. Jax stayed as he was, though it cost him considerable effort. He could imagine what this must look like to Luke. Him posed like a damn model, pictures of himself strewn all over the porch, and Kiki curled at his feet, still scribbling away.
“Oooh, Kiki!” squealed Andie, stooping down awkwardly and picking up the sketch closest to her. “These are fab! Are you going to sculpt him too?”
“For the love— Would you stop?”
Jax found it hard to keep his face straight as he watched Luke try to keep a hold on her as Andie stooped to pick up another.
“Stop doing that! Hold still. Fine. I’ll get them. Now will you hold still? Or better yet, sit down. Move y
our ass, Jax, and—”
“No!” all three of them said, Kiki the only one of them to say it without adding a glare in his direction. Andie even hit him in the arm and added a huff.
“What?” Luke demanded, dumbfounded—though why this surprised Jax, he did not know; the man was always putting his foot in his mouth. “What did I say wrong now?”
“Can’t you tell what’s going on here?” Andie indicated the whole porch with a wave of the hand holding one of Jax’s sketches.
“What?” Luke asked, truly perplexed. “You mean she’s drawing?”
“Oh my God, you plebian. Kiki is an artist. And what you are seeing right now is an artist in her zone. We’re not disrupting this, no way. Come on. Let’s go through the back door. On the way, you and I can pick some apples. I wanna try this baked apple recipe I saw online. It looks super easy. I bet even I can do it.”
Though she’d taken Luke by the arm and led him away as she spoke, she could be heard clearly, so Jax called after her, “I’ll take that bet.”
He and Kiki shared a smile as they listened to her laughter drift back to them on the sultry autumn breeze.
“Stop,” Luke snapped, sounding exasperated.
“Stop what?” Andie giggled, unperturbed at his surly tone. “I’m not climbing Mt. Everest, for crying out loud. I’m just trying to pick some apples.” In truth, she loved that he wanted to baby her. It felt very much like being cared for, and she rubbed a loving hand over the swell of her belly.