I mean.”
“Coco, the granddaughter said.” But he remembered the damned dog from the last time he’d been here years ago. Then, though, the dog had been younger and not traumatized. In fact, it had been feisty and yappy and a real pain in the butt. Now he almost felt sorry for the white mutt. “I’ll drop it off at her house. She was asking about it.”
“Her,” Janet said. “Coco’s a female.”
“Why do you think the dog was locked up? Did it get in the way?”
“Maybe she was locked in there by accident. Sometimes my cat will curl up in a closet or in a room where I’ve closed the door, and I won’t find him for hours.”
“This is a dog. And I remember it…her. She wasn’t exactly timid or quiet.” He glanced into the little black button eyes.
“I’ll put her in your car, and you can take her to Cissy Holt’s place. I saw a carrier in the bedroom.”
“We’re not done processing in there,” Jefferson said as she measured a piece of cracked, bloody tile directly under the balcony. “Just give us a second before you start taking things out.”
“I think I should stay,” Jack said, just as Cissy was thinking he should be leaving.
Damn him, Jack could be so muleheaded. Still, she thought she’d heard him wrong. “Don’t use this as an excuse.”
He handed B.J. to her. “If you want, I’ll camp out on the couch.”
“Don’t you get the concept of ‘separated’?” Cissy demanded in frustration. “Didn’t you hear what I was just saying? And, wait a minute.” She paused for effect as Beej squirmed in her arms. “Didn’t you say you got served today?”
“Don’t fight me,” Jack said softly, dangerously. “I’d just feel better about it,” he said, so close to her she could smell the clean scent of his aftershave, see the striations of darker blue in his irises. In her arms, her traitor of a son had the nerve to rain one of his incredible baby smiles on both of them. As if all were right in the world, as if his loving great-grandmother were alive and his parents were living some fairy tale.
“No,” she whispered, though her heart was tearing.
Jack leaned even closer, his breath warm against her ear. “Your psycho mother is on the run, Ciss. Remember her? How relentless and cruel she can be? God knows where she’ll turn up or what she’ll do. And your grandmother died tonight, possibly the result of someone helping her along to the hereafter.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that things have taken a turn for the weirder, and I don’t like it. I’m staying.” To prove his point, he walked into the living room, sidestepped an array of B.J.’s toys, and flopped himself down on the leather couch they’d picked out together less than two years earlier.
Her stupid heart squeezed, but she ignored it, just held onto her son a little more tightly. “Jack, you can’t stay here.”
“What’re you going to do? Call the police?”
“They’re probably already camped outside again, waiting for Marla.” God, he was stubborn. “I don’t want you here.”
“It’s only for a night.”
“No, Jack. Not one night, not one hour.” She shifted Beej from one hip to the other.
“Damn it, Cissy.”
“I know. I’m pigheaded. So are you, actually. We should have been perfect for each other.” She was steamed now, all the rage she’d felt after witnessing Jack step out of Larissa’s apartment boiling up again.
She remembered the scene in vivid technicolor. Jack had still been tucking his shirt into his pants, his tie was missing, his hair wet and a mess, as if he’d just towel-dried it after a shower. Larissa was in the doorway in a bathrobe and, it seemed, nothing much else. Cissy’s heart had dropped to her knees as she’d sat in her car, half a block up the street, sunglasses covering her eyes.
Though they hadn’t kissed, Jack had flashed a smile at Larissa as he’d left and sketched her a wave before tripping down the stairs to his Jeep, parked right in the parking lot of the apartment building. Larissa, watching him go, had stepped barefoot onto the outside balcony, leaned over the top railing, and blown him a kiss as he’d fired up his Jeep. Her just-washed hair had caught in the sunlight, her cleavage playing peek-a-boo with the lapels of her robe, a breast slipping free before she laughingly clutched the lapels together again.
All for Jack’s benefit.
Even now, just thinking about it, Cissy felt wounded and mad all over again. Her jaw tensed.
As if reading her thoughts, Jack stopped arguing. He reached forward and ruffled Beej’s blond curls. Tiredly, he asked, “You sure that’s the way you want it?”
She inched her chin up a fraction. “Absolutely.”
“Then…if you’re sure you and Beej will be okay here alone…”
“We’ll be fine,” she assured him as if she meant it, as if it didn’t hurt her to face him, as if she weren’t already grieving for her grandmother, as if she weren’t really worried about her mother’s escape from prison. “If I get lucky, I might even end up with two detectives staked outside.”
He frowned and looked about to argue, then changed his mind. “Okay, well, then I guess I’ll go.” He collected his son in a bear hug then set him down. “Good-bye, big guy,” he said to Beej, his tender tone squeezing Cissy’s heart.
Steeling herself, she walked to the front door and held it open. Jack’s lips twisted. He glanced up at Cissy, and the look he sent her stopped the air in her lungs. Dark. Hot. Angry. And sexy as hell. The temperature in the house seemed to inch up a few degrees. But then that’s the way it had always been between them, every emotion intense.
“You win, Ciss. Sorry about Gran.” As he passed, he swiped a chaste kiss across her cheek, and she nearly changed her mind. Her pulse jumped, and she felt heat come to her cheeks. Don’t do it, Cissy. Don’t let him get to you. You’ll only regret it.
She didn’t so much as look at him. Let him think her a heartless bitch; it didn’t much matter anymore.
As Jack walked outside and a gust of moist air swept in, she heard the furnace wheeze and rumble, trying to come on again, before going silent once more.
In her arms, B.J. twisted and wriggled. “Dad-dee!” he cried suddenly, as if finally understanding that his favorite person on the planet was leaving. “Dad-dee!”
Yeah, Cissy thought, kicking the door shut and feeling miserable inside—all in all it had been one helluva day.
Chapter 5
Jack mentally kicked himself up one side and down the other as he walked to his Jeep. He’d blown it with Cissy, no doubt about it, and she was making life hell for him. He decided he deserved it. Not that he’d slept with Larissa. But he’d come damned close. Too close. “Stupid,” he muttered,
