babe, I should have called you to tell you I was running late. But I was having a hell of a time with my landlord, trying to reason with him. He raised my rent two hundred bucks a month.”
“What? Oh, Pete, that’s awful!”
“I don’t know how I’m going to afford it.” Trevor sank back, let his shoulders slump, a sigh of defeat emerge.
And waited for Jill to pull out of the starting gate.
“And they just cut your hours at the office, too,” Jill said, hating the way Pete looked so worried, the corners of his cute blue eyes crinkling up. He was always such an upbeat person, it was difficult to see him like this.
It still amazed her that a man as good-looking as Pete Trevor had looked twice at her, a woman about as exciting as day-old oatmeal. She had plain hair, a plain face, and a plain body, except for overly large breasts that had earned her the high school nickname Charmin. Don’t squeeze the Charmin…
But Pete was so sweet, so good to her. She was pretty sure she was falling in love with him.
“It will be okay. I’ll figure something out. I have a little savings.” His eyes darted off to the left, and his fingers went into his hair.
He was lying to reassure her, Jill realized with a start. He didn’t want her to worry. Her heart swelled, and she spoke before she could think, doubt, talk herself out of it.
“Why don’t we move in together?” Jill blushed at her presumptuousness, but forged ahead despite Pete’s look of surprise. “I mean, you spend the night with me a couple of times a week anyway, and why should we both waste all this money on rent? If we moved in together it would save us about four hundred dollars a month each.”
She held her breath, waited for his response.
“I thought about it,” he admitted. “But I didn’t want you to think I was freeloading.”
“Of course not! We’ll be splitting the rent.”
Pete gave her a smile, the one that made her insides tumble and burn. “What if living together reveals all my flaws? I don’t want to lose you.”
It was love. It was definitely love. “You won’t lose me. You have me as long as you want me.”
He picked up her hand, kissed the back of it. “I’m counting on that.”
Russ zipped up his jacket when he stepped outside. He could feel the tension actually lifting and rising into his chest and head, squeezing him, pissing him off, and making him want to grab Laurel and lock her in a room with crime scene photos.
Take care of herself. Ha. Laurel was a bunny in a city full of foxes. Some day she was going to be just hopping along, all soft and sweet, looking for clover, then wham…in for the kill.
He had a job to do, and it wasn’t protecting naive women from themselves. Laurel was walking west down the street, head down, not the least bit aware of her surroundings. Shit, someone could step right out of that hedge and just grab her and she wouldn’t even realize until it was too late, because she wouldn’t hear a damn thing.
Take care of herself? Please. She screamed rich, vulnerable woman alone, take advantage of me. She was so damn appealing, Russ wanted to take advantage of her himself.
Watching her hit the button to unlock a white Lexus SUV, Russ swore. He jogged the last ten feet to the bookstore and got in the passenger seat of Anders’s black truck, keeping Laurel in his view. “Follow that Lexus SUV.”
Jerry shifted the truck into gear, but tossed him a petulant look. “Where the hell have you been? You’ve been gone for thirty minutes. You cheating on me? Got another detective on the side you’re hooking up with?”
Russ laughed. He liked working with Anders, who kept the laughs rolling even when they were knee-deep in scumbags—or worse, paperwork. “Come on, Jerry, you know I’d never do that to you. But a good relationship needs to be based on trust, you know.”
“You’re gone all the time, you don’t talk to me anymore, what am I supposed to think?” Jerry stopped at the light behind Laurel’s Lexus and shot Russ a grin. “You come home late, smelling like cigarettes and coffee, which I know you don’t drink. I think we either need counseling or it’s over, man, it’s just over.”
“Shut up, Anders. You know you’re the only partner for me.”
“Be still my heart.” Jerry glanced around as he followed Laurel down Lake Avenue and onto Edgewater Drive, past stately brick and stone homes built in the twenties as suburban getaways for the rich. “The blonde lives well, huh?”
“Her house, but she lives with her mother. Inheritance, I guess.” Russ kept one eye on the taillights of Laurel’s car while checking out the neighborhood. “She didn’t know who Dean was, never heard of him. Get this. She thought she was chatting online with Russ Evans, her friend Michelle’s old high school classmate.”
Jerry whistled. “Dean’s a smart-ass.”
“Who knows more than we thought.” He watched Laurel pull into the driveway of a massive brick three-story house, the front flat, its architectural focus the two dozen windows reflecting crisp moonlight back at him. “Jesus, what do you call this kind of house?”
“Expensive.”
And more than a family of twelve could ever use. “My whole house would fit in one room.”
Jerry idled at the curb, his eyebrow lifted. “Got the lake in her backyard and the world at her feet. Must be nice to be rich.”
Laurel’s car had retreated into the garage around the back of the house, and now lights were flicking on all over the first floor. There were no blinds at the windows, and even though the house sat back from the street behind a stately yard covered under six inches of snow, Russ could see the outlines of furniture, lamps. Then Laurel, as her blond head popped past a sofa.
He thought about her suggestion that they have sex. It may have been a dig, a way to prove her point, but his body had heard that suggestion and run with it. Worse, he kept imagining her saying that to someone else—and him ripping the guy’s face off.
“Wait here a minute.” Russ opened the car door.
“Oh, here we go again. Wait here, Jerry, while I flirt with a suspect.”
“She’s not a suspect, I told you that.” He got out of the car. “Call Pam on your cell phone if you’re feeling left out. Try and make her remember why she ever thought dating you was a good idea.”
Anders called after him, “And while you’re hitting on Blondie, why don’t you try doing your job and seeing if she’ll act as bait to help pull in Dean.”
Russ stopped closing the door, catching it with his foot. He knew Anders was right, but the idea of enlisting Laurel’s help went against everything he was trying to accomplish. He wanted her out of this. Now. And to stay in her pretty house, protected and innocent, untouched by ugly reality.
“Not this woman, Anders. We put her up as bait, and more than likely she’s going to get eaten.”
“By
