SWNOVELS Nevermore Bookstore: Chapter 7
Imposter
(ĬM-PŎS′TƏR) NOUN. ONE WHO ENGAGES IN DECEPTION UNDER AN ASSUMED NAME OR IDENTITY.
Normally, Fox wasn’t a fortunate man.
But to find an industrial-sized demolition/remodel waste container in the alley between Nevermore and Spill the Tea & Spice Emporium the same moment he might barf? Could almost be considered lucky.
Not only for splatter control, should he need it, but also to put something very substantial between the sight of Cady and the self-righteous sheriff in a lip lock.
Cady kissed him.
As in actively grabbed and kissed the square son of a bitch. She didn’t wait for the Look. Or the Lean. Just went for it—crushed her lips against another man’s lips with an artless enthusiasm that broke his fucking heart.
Now he had a new plot line to add to his nightmares. Behind door number one was what’d driven him to the woods in the first place.
Behind door number two was whatever the hell Cady and the sheriff got up to.
Choose your own headfuck.
Fighting a gag, Fox knew two things for sure: Lunch would be just as spicy coming up as it was going down.
And he’d rather have his eyes pecked out by a diseased raven than watch something like that again.
Cady’s lips crushed to another man’s hard, undeserving mouth.
Swallowing profusely against the tingle in his jaw, Fox finally allowed himself to unfurl the fingers he’d been clutching around the ghost of her touch all day.
Didn’t matter—his fingers still buzzed with an arc of energy, electrifying the thrill until he swore he could feel every whorl of his fingerprints locking away the sensation of her skin.
Today had been an intense reminder of just how much fire he was playing with here. Enough to burn them both.
Him…quite literally.
Cady Bloomquist might be a bit absent-minded, but she wasn’t an idiot. Just the opposite. And if she spent a good deal of time in his presence, the chances of forgetting himself and making a mistake that gave him away increased exponentially.
Not that he wasn’t fucking good at this kind of thing. He’d become so adept in the past that he could do a job one night, and encounter a rare witness the next day with a friendly handshake and no trace of recognition.
But Cady…she didn’t just look at people.
She saw them.
She called to his humanity. Rekindled it with her struggles. Beckoned it out with her tears.
She hadn’t approached him on the street with the same caution and preconceived notions others had about his supposed life circumstances. Her eyes didn’t skip over him to shield her heart from the ache of pity or the fear of contamination.
Which made things more complicated. Fox relied on people’s need to avoid responsibility for the suffering of others by looking away.
He’d need a different tactic with her.
Fuck that. No. He couldn’t be making plans. No tactic necessary. He should back off. Keep a bird’s-eye view rather than lurking around her shop making everyone feel uneasy.
Besides, that sheriff was asking for a punch in the mouth, and with every encounter, Fox was more and more inclined to comply.
It wasn’t even so much that she’d kissed the sheriff.
He’d even brightened when he thought she might come away unaffected. Then he noticed the shift in her features. The arrangement softening from determination to anticipation to…
Yearning?
Rapture?
The sight drove him away.
It was that or act on one of the myriad inappropriate instincts coursing through him.
He swallowed the acid trying to crawl up his throat and let his shoulder blades meet the brick wall of her shop to prop him up. Lifting his head to the sky, he did his best to slow his breathing.
His bones felt cold. Heavy. His lungs tight and aching.
She’d spoken of Fox to Gemma today. A lot.
I’m right here.
Crazy as it made him, he had to admit to himself that she was kissing the right man. Someone who wanted her. Someone who could stay close. Protect her.
This was good.
In fact, this could speed things up.
Sheriff Square Pants wasn’t exactly his favorite human alive, but they were not technically at cross-purposes. In fact, the man could be helpful, though he wouldn’t know it.
The problem with that shiny badge was he had to toe a certain line. Count all his empty brass once he discharged his weapon. Explain all forms of violence.
And he should. His job was to protect and serve.
Fox, however, was held to no such creed. Didn’t rely on the chains of morality. If he had a god, it was an ancient, wild one, and he’d moved to a place where the laws of the forest made more sense than those governing the people in their cities.
The lawman was useful, though. In a boots-on-the-ground kind of way.
They were satellites pulled into her orbit, neither of whom would want to be released from her gravitational pull.
Christ. What a fucking day.
A deep, deep fatigue rolled over him, born of muscles that had refused to unclench the entire time he’d been inside her store. He was lucky hers was the corner shop on Water and Raven Streets.
The open doors helped, the floor-to-ceiling windows allowing the fall sea air to keep moving around him, giving the illusion of a somewhat open space. It had not been unbearable, but nor was it easy.
He’d been mentally screaming at himself to leave her alone. At one point, he’d possessed a will of iron and a resolve someone had once called supernatural.
Apparently, though, Cady’s tears were his kryptonite.
He was such a shitheel. He’d known that forever, but it was like he’d been a cockroach, and was now a goopy crunch at the bottom of God’s combat boot.
It was a cruel thing to keep calling her, to establish or maintain any sort of emotional or mental intimacy without the chance of ever actually introducing himself to her.
She needed someone stable. Steady.
Normal.
Today had been an anomaly. He’d seen someone in pain. In need. And he couldn’t allow it to stand.
But…
He couldn’t be the man who carried heavy things for Cady. He couldn’t be someone she relied on. His past was too dark, and his future too uncertain.
Fucking all the way off was best for them both in the end.
He was a weight no one should have to carry. This heavy brick of dysfunction. Cumbersome on a good day, a menace on a bad one.
Just as he reached the depressing realization that his life had become the lyrics and/or title of a Creed song, something hit the ground next to his feet at terminal velocity.
If he’d not stepped forward to check, he might have missed the impact of what crumpled against his crown, exploding into a shower of shit.
Or, more exactly, dirt.
Soil.
What the fuck?
Instant rage surged through him, akin to the kind when someone’s head was bonked on a kitchen cabinet and they instantly considered the homicide of whomever left it open.
“Ohmigod, no!” That familiar voice coursed down his spine, cooling his ire with a visceral shiver. “Oh shit. Bob? Bob is that you? Are you okay?”
Fox scrubbed at his mat of hair, dislodging some dark soil flecked with little white fertilizer balls before craning his neck to look up.
Cady was a disembodied, head-shaped shadow against the evening sky, leaning over the waist-high wall, sweet lips twisted with mortification.
Though his scalp smarted and stung, he noticed the pot she’d dropped on his head had been in one of those expendable plastic jobbers that crumpled if you squeezed them too hard.
No harm done.
“I didn’t think anyone was in the alley! I swear I was intending that for the dumpster—I just have perpetually shitty aim. How bad are you hurt? Do you need me to call an ambulance?”
He shook his head, half in denial and half to check for concussion. No swelling. No dizziness. Vision was okay. So far, so good. “I—”
“Stay right there! I’m coming down!”
Spitting some grit from his mouth, he held up a staying hand. “No—”
She’d already disappeared.
He had just decided to restrict contact or interaction with the woman! He needed to stay away from her. For both their sakes. So, of course, she dropped a fern on his head.
Of course she did.
He swore to God, if she brought the motherfucking sheriff down with her to assess his injuries? He’d slit his own throat and throw himself in the dumpster.
Trash glinted in the moonlight against the honest-to-God cobbles, and he stooped to retrieve some and huck it into the dumpster. Plastic sheeting. Window molding. A mess of wires that may have been salvageable as a security camera or something if the dirt hadn’t exploded all over.
Might have been handy during the break-in.
Cady’s hurried descent down the balcony steps reminded him of what a tactical and security nightmare this building was. Both were connected by a spiral staircase that reached from the waterfront boardwalk to the third floor, only interrupted by decorative gates with—he guessed it—no locks.
Fuck, this world was too dangerous for her to live in.
When she reached the first-floor landing, she started chanting his name in a panic. Well, not his name, but the one they’d assigned him.
“Oh my God, Bob! Oh my God, Bob! Oh my God! Bob! Are you okay? Are you bleeding? I should call you an ambulance.” Her phone was in her hand before he could finish a blink. “How is your vision? Are you dizzy?”
She rushed him like a fraternity, arms reaching, desperately doing her best to examine him while he refused to allow it.
To keep himself from enfolding his body around her, Fox shrank away instead, using the last of his willpower to create space between their bodies.
“I’m okay.” He adopted his patois from this morning—diction more precise than his own, three octaves of separation from the regular pitch, and signifying English from another part of the country in minute ways, so as not be thought of as an “accent.”
The devil resided in the details.
Especially his.
“You might not be okay!” She clutched at his elbow, and he had to stop or give up his balance. “Head wounds can be way unpredictable, and worse than you initially think.” She dropped her arms, correctly reading his lack of enthusiasm for physical touch. “Listen. Let me take you to the urgent care, at least. They’ll do a quick scan and make sure there’s no damage to your brain.” She must have read the denial in his posture, because she hurriedly added, “I have workman’s comp insurance. If you need it. Please. This is my fault. Let me help you.”
Go to the urgent care and say what? That he lost a fight with a ficus?
No thanks.
“No injuries,” he said. “It glanced off.”
She shook her head. “But you don’t know that. Sometimes injuries are hidden until they make themselves known.”
She had no idea.
“No hospital.” He remembered this time to keep his voice gentle, but still her mouth snapped shut. Eyes the size of tea saucers filled with moist concern.
Blinking grit from his eyelids, he squinted at the pile of leaves, stems, and a disarray of dirt. “What’d it do?”
She cringed, looking up with only her eyes and blinking rapidly against a gather of damp emotion. “Actually…a patch in my roof is leaking again. I’m closing it off for, um, for repairs. Just getting rid of extra stuff.”
Fox also glanced up, as if he could diagnose what the roof needed from this vantage.
“It buckled last year beneath storm debris,” she explained, turning to the stair railing and mounting the first step. “Aunt Fern was supposed to hire a contractor, but she got sick…and it didn’t seem to matter to either of us after that.”
“Yeah?” he asked as she climbed slowly and carefully, keeping her Keds on the wide parts of the spiral steps.
“I should be getting a payout from the insurance from the break-in for damages—I figured I could use that to pay for work on the roof and do a lot of the indoor stuff DIY to save funds.”
He couldn’t think of a single thing to say but “huh” as she passed the second-floor landing and kept on climbing.
That ass. Not just plump and wide in sexy jeans, but round, too. It shifted so dramatically as she walked, making an eternal figure eight.
Eternity. That was how long he’d want her.
“Aunt Fern was a bit of a hoarder,” she admitted sheepishly, glancing down almost in time to catch his eyes where they ought not be. “I keep finding things up here on the roof that should have been thrown away years ago. Old, rusty installations. Broken furniture. Plastic totes of stuff she never planned to use again but couldn’t part with… It’s just so overwhelming sometimes.”
From the roof, they caught the last of the light as it disappeared over the mountains.
Casting his eyes around the flat roof-turned-veranda, he frowned at the mess illuminated by a string of decorative outdoor lights. “Who helps?”
“No one.” She shrugged. “I just get to it when I have the…the time.”
“Your back,” he reminded her, frown deepening to a scowl.
She waved her hand as if to bat his ire away. “Oh yeah, my back’s an asshole, but, as you have been made painfully aware, I can roll a thing or two off the roof without too much problem.” Her lips twisted in a wry grimace as her eyes made their way to his soil-caked hair. As if of its own accord, her fingers reached toward him. “Are you sure I can’t just look at your head? It’s the least I can do.”
He jerked away, realizing for the first time that he’d followed her up three flights of stairs without even meaning to.
Like some pathetic stray puppy.
Fox was forced to pause his self-criticism to be astounded. Somehow, she’d Jedi-mind-tricked him out of his bullshit willpower using some sort of Pacific Northwest Bookwitch magic and then dangled that ass in front of him like a carrot in front of a mule up two flights of stairs.
He needed to get out of here.
The pole in the middle of the spiral staircase seemed sturdy enough to slide down, and the only thing that could stop him…
Was a hole the size of a small car in her motherfucking ceiling.
Knowing her like he did, Fox had expected a bit of chaos in her life. But this?
As if just noticing he’d stopped dead in his tracks, she turned to follow the direction of his stare.
“Yeah.” Her nose crinkled as she gave a soft, nervous laugh. “We had an old friend sort of patch it using nails, polyethylene plastic sheeting layers, and this nifty little post that props it up like a tent so the water doesn’t just gather and make it heavy. I suppose I need to get it fixed at some point.”
Some point being yesterday. The tarp and waterproof fasteners were made for slanted roofs and temporary fixes, not the flat roof of an old Victorian building. Even for a temporary fix, she needed rolled PVC membrane roofing materials at the very least.
“Easy patch.” It was absolute last thing he’d meant to say, but here they were.
“You think?” She looked at him askance. “It’s not getting any smaller, that’s for sure.”
“Take me three days, tops.” He should eat a bullet. It would make less room for his foot in there.
Brightening, she clapped her hands together and linked her fingers as if in prayer. “Tell me you mean it,” she pleaded. “I’ve been looking for a contractor. But people around here are busy and expensive. Are you saying you’d be interested in—”
Absolutely not.
“Sure.”
Fuck.
Around her, his brain didn’t make connections to his mouth or his dick, allowing them to work on their own. But they were sure as shit talking to each other. And apparently making all the decisions these days.
“Last you through the winter, anyways.” Now that he’d gone and done it, he instantly warmed to the idea. How better to keep a bird’s-eye view on her than perching on her roof for a couple of days?
Easy there, cowboy, he cautioned himself. Don’t go lowering your guard now.
Not when it was the most dangerous. When he was weak from a head wound. Yeah. Maybe that pot hit him harder than he’d realized. Brain damage could be the only explanation.
“Excellent!” She clapped her hands again, this time in celebration. “Let’s talk about hourly compensation for— Ohmygodyourebleeding.”
Before he could register the abrupt shift, she was in front of him, reaching up toward a trickle above his eye he hadn’t yet noticed.
He regretted the emotion he read in her eyes at the rejection of her touch, but a woman like her didn’t need to handle his kind of filth.
Face hardening with determination, she seized his soil-dusted elbow. “I know you don’t like to be inside, but I need to take a look at the wound, so you are coming with me,” she insisted, able to drag him a few paces toward the door until he recovered enough of his wits to plant his feet.
“I’m fine,” he protested.
Cady’s expression gentled as she turned back to him, not releasing her grip on his coat. “The first and third floors of Nevermore are paneled in windows to maximize the view of the sky and sea. I know you don’t like to be inside, but could I tempt you long enough to clean the cut? It could get infected or worse if you don’t get the soil out of it.” She released him, looking down at the grime left on her palm. Mostly her doing, with a little help from himself and the wet earth he slept on. “Maybe take a hot shower?”
When he realized she was tugging him toward the roof door, panic clamped around his ribs like a vise. “I shouldn’t.”
“Don’t worry,” she soothed in a tone that made him hesitate. “Nevermore restrooms are on the second-floor balcony inside, but my personal bathroom is on the third floor in my loft, which has no walls and floor-to-ceiling windows. Plus, the balcony stretches across the entire back of the building with a door off the bathroom. It faces the water, so the view from the boardwalk is blocked by the lower-floor balconies. You can be buck-ass naked in front of the window and no one could see in—unless they’re using binoculars from a boat, I suppose.”
Or the plateau above the fountain.
Fox fought not to stumble. She’d intuited that he was a claustrophobic nutcase, because he wasn’t the sort of man who could hide his trauma anymore.
“Please? What if I made food and we talked shop on the picnic table off the second-floor balcony? It’s sheltered by the deck over it, so we’ll stay dry.” Her gentle eyes showed no pity. No fear. No judgment for his weakness, just patience and…hope?
To some men, a rooftop picnic wouldn’t sound like heaven, just a regular Tuesday.
But to him?
“I guess I could use a shower,” he heard himself say. His longest sentence in her presence thus far, he was pretty sure.
“There we go!” She turned and enthusiastically pulled him toward the door in the middle of the roof. Cautiously, she led him down a switchback staircase to her loft.
To the place over which he stood sentinel, watching her sleep.
Jesus Christ. His sister had watched enough Lifetime movies in high school for him to recognize himself as the villain.
He eyed the stairway dubiously. “Your”—gulp—“sheriff sweetheart won’t like it.”
She made a rude noise. “He’s not my sweetheart. He’s more like…” She paused to think of a word. “Well, anyways, no one tells me who to invite into a building I own.” She turned from him and kept moving. “Or at least hope I own…” he thought he heard her mutter.
He cocked his head to the side like a dog learning something new.
Something interesting.
The staircase threatened to constrict him between its walls before dumping them into the airy loft. Two of the four walls were constructed of stormproof glass, above which glow-blocking blinds lurked, eager to be used.
He was so glad she didn’t tend to lower them. The view from both inside and out was unparalleled.
Oddly enough, the sinkhole-sized gap in the ceiling wasn’t too apparent from the main room, which was completely open but for a handful of columns holding up the ceiling.
Well, in theory.
The edge of the fissure peeked from over the solid wall, in front of which the kitchen appliances and cabinets lined up like a vintage vignette.
“The bathroom is tucked behind here.” She led him to an impressive alcove in the corner that cut several feet from along the sea-facing windows. After kicking off her boots in the general area of a shoe basket, she retrieved an elastic from her wrist and gathered her hair into a high ponytail.
He did his best not to notice her breasts beneath the words My Favorite Season is the Fall of the Patriarchy.
Despite the windows, he still catalogued the exits. Basically, the roof, the stairs, and a front door.
This fucking place would never pass code if it were built sometime in the last century. And yet these Victorian brick buildings lasted so much longer.
His heart only pounded a million miles a second because he was indoors. Sweat slicked his spine with hair-lifting awareness because of how he’d been ruined.
It had nothing to do with her.
He wiped at his temple, where a second trickle of blood slowly joined the first, before it could drip into his eyebrow.
Reaching into the enclosed room, she clicked on a light, and he froze.
“Pretty cool, huh?” She surveyed her own bathroom as if seeing it through his eyes. “My aunt had expensive tastes and tended to date rich men.” A grim note lurked beneath her obvious fondness for the woman. “They often gifted her the upgrades she requested, rather than diamonds or expensive perfume.”
“Smart woman,” he remarked, drinking in the space.
No toilet in view—he surmised it probably hunkered beneath the half wall away from the windows.
Cornered by the two glass walls, a gigantic copper tub stretched beneath a rain shower that might actually be tall enough for him. The shower curtain hung from an oval suspended by antique-looking copper pipe.
Floor-to-ceiling drapes closed over the wall for privacy, so it wouldn’t be very easy to see in from the walkway three floors up with your vision impeded by the large balconies.
It was kind of perfect.
“Sorry, it’s been a minute since I cleaned it.” The chagrin in her voice struck him as funny, and he wondered what she’d think when she realized he usually went in the woods and bathed in a lake.
“Doesn’t matter.”
The room smelled like her—something earthy with undertones of fruit, but free of musk or florals. There was nothing even the most talented perfumer could do to recreate the scent. Any attempt would be trite and underwhelming. Some things were so pure, they couldn’t be captured. Like books and rain.
He breathed so deeply that his lungs complained before he was forced to exhale in a gust.
“You doing okay?” She craned her neck to look up at him as he loomed in the doorway, almost tall enough to put his chin on the top of her head.
No, he was not doing okay.
Only the whisper of a butterfly’s wing existed between him and the woman he’d promised never to touch. He suffered distressing thoughts and attachments to said woman. Not to mention, he was in a city.
In a building.
Also, there was the head wound and shit. Probably should wash that before his demons caught up and drove him outside.
“I’m good.”
Instead of retreating, she strode into the bathroom and peeked inside the freestanding sink, opened a linen closet on the left to show him where the towels were, and walked to the tub to pull back the curtain and peek in.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” she said. “I’m just making sure Kevin Costner isn’t hiding in here again.”
Fox stared at her for five full, uncomprehending seconds before she blinked and shook her head.
“Sorry, Kevin Costner is old Mr. Henery’s cat from the Cyclery down the street. I offered to watch him while he went in for a minor procedure. But for such a big fellow, he’s certainly good at hiding and escaping…” She must have caught his skepticism, because she clarified, “Kevin Costner, not Mr. Henery.”
“It’s fine.” He didn’t not watch her bend over and check the cupboards. And averted his eyes just in time for her to straighten and whirl to face him.
She backed up toward the door, staring at him oddly, as if seeing him for the first time. Maybe his pitiful, dingy state was more appallingly apparent beneath a chandelier.
“Okay, well, the shower is all yours. If you need trimmers or a razor, you’ll find them in the wicker drawers next to the bathtub. Sorry in advance that all my stuff smells so girly. Hope you don’t mind mango shampoo…”
He knew what she was thinking—he could see it on her face. In this room built for people the size of a century ago, he probably looked like Sasquatch or something.
Whereas she resembled one of Renoir’s famous bathers—eyes wide and luminous as the moon. Something so secretive and sensual about her smile that the sight of it would make the devil whimper.
Clutching the door latch, she chewed on the inside of her cheek, assessing him one last time. “I mean, I should probably ask because… Well, people will ask me if I checked… But you’re not a serial killer, right?”
He shrugged. “More of an oatmeal guy.”
It was more words than he’d strung together in her presence. An echo of a man who used to be well-liked for his sense of humor.
She blinked three times, her face crumpled with confusion before the joke hit her and crinkled her eyes.
Fox recognized the nervous undertone to her laugh. She was having second thoughts.
“I can go,” he offered gently, shoving his fists in his pockets to keep them from view.
Her features softened and then became resolute. “No. You know what? No, you’re a new employee, and my aunt treated all her employees like family.”
Guess now wasn’t the time to tell her that most violent crimes were perpetrated by the members of the victim’s family.
Words crowded his mouth. He wanted to extol her virtues, to express his gratitude, to praise her and punish her for having such an open heart and a fucking death wish.
Instead, he faced the window, staring hard at the violence of the waves as the wind calmed his own stormy spirit.
She was gone when he turned back, and he hoped he’d not seemed too skull-fucked if he missed something she said.
As he turned toward the bath, his reflection caught his eye.
Jesus, it was worse than he thought. The silt he’d rubbed in his hair had clumped in the moisture of the day. He’d let his hair grow too long and could no longer hide its tendency to curl. His beard almost hung to his sternum, and at thirty-three, he wasn’t supposed to be sporting this much gray.
Soil still clung to his clothes along with those little white balls of fertilizer.
Peeling off his layers, he uncovered a body marked, pocked, scarred, inked, and hard.
Of course she was afraid of him…she had every reason to be.
Fox tried to silence the roar of his empty stomach with a hand over the noise as he stepped from the shower.
He had some cash for fast food, but he’d take a doggie bag of whatever she was making.
After taking the time to wipe any evidence of him from the tub, he stepped around the shower alcove to retrieve his clothes.
Not finding them after two cursory inspections, he checked the linen cupboard, the sink, and the chest of drawers from which he’d taken some old-fashioned male grooming scissors—the origin of which he didn’t want to know—a razor, and a washcloth for his shower.
Fox froze when he pulled out the third drawer down.
End-to-end pills. And not “medicine cabinet” pills for coughs, colds, allergies, aches, fevers, food poisoning, and minor first aid. But prescription drugs all written to Cadence Bloomquist.
More than a woman in her twenties should have to take.
Shut the drawer, he ordered himself, but he’d already retrieved one of the pill bottles from its orderly spot.
Tramadol. Not an opioid, but a great deal stronger than ibuprofen. The next one lifted his eyebrows. Dilaudid. Basically morphine. Recently filled.
Holy shit, did sweet, naïve Cady have a pill problem?
Or had her back injury been that bad?
Actively hating himself, Fox searched through other bottles. Cosentyx, an IL-17 inhibitor, steroids, both creams and pills, muscle relaxers, immunosuppressants, all with several refills.
Not an addict…
So much made sense. Her pinched face today, the tears and the hard words for her friend. The impatience with the sheriff.
Not asking him up after that hot kiss.
He shut his eyes and let out an eternal breath through his nose. She was ill. Chronically ill. And lived alone, and tried to fix roofs by herself, and shelved books, and invited random, large men into her shower, taking his word that he wasn’t going to murder her and do weird stuff like wear her skin before anybody missed her.
Fuck me, I can’t go yet. He scrubbed callused hands over his face. There were too many unanswered questions. Too many people in Cady’s sphere could be problematic.
People were most often hurt by those they loved.
What he needed was a reason to believe she was safe. He needed information.
But first, he needed his clothes.
After slicking damp hair back with his hand, he tucked the towel around his waist and ventured to the door she’d thoughtfully left ajar.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said around a strangled little sob. “I was so out of line. I felt like everyone was surrounding me telling me I couldn’t function the way I wanted to, and today was so uncomfortable and hard, I felt like they were right. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. I just love you so much.” Her voice wobbled dangerously.
Fox swallowed as his heart dropped into his stomach.
He might have to just die in here, because he’d be goddamned if he was going out there while she was sniffling on the phone with the saintly sheriff.
“No, I love you!” Sobbed another disembodied voice, this one grating through a smartphone speaker.
A woman. Fuck yeah.
“I was too bossy. This mouth, it gets me in trouble. I just worry, okay? What if someone hurts you?”
“I’m more worried about losing the store, Gemma.” The naked anxiety in her voice threatened to pull his heart from its cage and drop it, still beating, on the floor.
“You’re not going to lose the store,” Gemma soothed.
“I can’t be a Walmart greeter!” Cady wailed.
“Oh, honey. No danger of that. They’ll never allow Walmart to touch Townsend Harbor. That would kill the small-town vibe.”
“Well, I can’t work at Fronks. They’ll just put me in the light-duty section with that guy Willard the diabetic racist.”
“Listen to me, Cadence Bloomquist. That isn’t going to happen. We’ll figure it out, even if I have to do some weird, illegal shit at the county building.”
“I’d never ask—”
“I know. I do what I want.” Gemma gave a saucy laugh. “And I want to help you.”
“I love you, babe.” Cady sniffed. “OMG, not to change the subject, but look at Kevin Costner.”
“He’s such a handsome boi! When did you finally get him to sit on your lap?”
“Just now. He’s never done this before…” Cady’s voice dropped to a whisper.
Okay, the conversation had turned a corner—it seemed safer to venture out into the open.
“Cady?” Fox murmured in acceptable “you’re on the phone” tones.
He found her on the comfy-looking overstuffed couch facing the window and the wild sea beyond. Perched on her chest was one of the biggest Maine Coons he’d seen in his entire life. With a long coat of black, orange, and brown, he was a majestic creature, even if his ears did look somewhat like a gremlin’s.
“He’s never let me pet him before, let alone snuggle,” Cady stage-whispered as Gemma made gooey eyes at the creature vibrating like a well-oiled Harley.
After clearing his throat, Fox asked in a louder voice, “Hey, uh…have you seen my clothes?”
“What?” came the squeal from the phone.
Both the cat and Cady swiveled their heads, the rest of them frozen in surprise.
“Um, Gem, I have to go.”
“Cady? Who is there?” came the demand at such a decibel level that he worried for the structural integrity of the glass. “Is that Sher—”
“Talk tomorrow!” Cady ended the video call then shoved the phone under a couch pillow as if it’d done something to be ashamed of.
Acting as if he’d discovered nothing about her illness or financial desperation, he adopted his generally blank expression and jerked his chin toward the cat. “Kevin Costner?”
She didn’t seem to be able to blink. Or swallow.
Her jaw loosened so much that she was apparently no longer able to form words. Cobalt eyes touched him everywhere—his shoulders, chest, each ridge of his abdomen—before dropping to the towel. Before she had too long to contemplate what was going on beneath the towel, her eyes snapped back up to his face. The sight didn’t seem to do much for her auditory capabilities.
“Should I…”
Finally she turned away, burying her face in the cat’s mane. “I was so excited about snuggling with Kevin Costner, I couldn’t bring myself to move him and cook, so I ordered Thai. I got you two dishes in case you had one of the top five allergies.”
Well, fuck, now he felt bad she’d spent money. “You didn’t have to do that.” Also, hadn’t she just been to dinner with the sheriff?
“Psssh. I promised you food, and I am the mediest-of-ocre chefs. I had a salad course earlier, and people seem to think that’s a whole meal…so I hope you don’t mind something heavier.” She pursed her lips at Kevin Costner and stroked along the cat’s spine, threading her fingers through fluffy hair with apparent delight.
If Fox watched her much longer, his hard-on might split the towel. “My clothes?”
She startled, causing the cat to launch off her lap and zoom under the bed.
A bed Fox refused to look at. What with its fluffy, silky, dark purple coverlet and an intense array of pillows.
Who decided to make lofts, anyway? No one wanted your guests to come over for dinner and automatically be in your bedroom. No man could be in the space with Cady and a bed and not be dying to use the mattress for its second-most-intended purpose.
Wincing, she stood. “Oh, sorry. I was so stricken over having dropped so much dirt on your jacket and jeans, I popped all your stuff in the wash. I’ll switch them to the dryer, so they’ll be done while we eat.” She shuffled over to a closet off the kitchen and opened it to reveal a washer and dryer.
She reached in, squeaked, and pulled out, grabbing her back.
Fox was at her side in a minute. “Let me.” He snatched the handful of stuff in the washer and bent to load it in the dryer before pushing the buttons to dry as quickly as possible.
“Show-off,” she muttered, and turned too slowly for him to miss the fact that she’d been watching the towel against his backside when he bent.
You can’t know that shit, he yelled at himself. Don’t even consider…
Making herself busy in the kitchen, she unpacked containers of noodles, curries, and kabobbed meat. “Dish up whatever you want.”
Thai in a towel?
After clearing her throat twice, she said, “I have a robe you could wear if you’re cold. It’s a kimono, and it has a few orchids and a peacock on it, but it’s warm and huge.”
He didn’t even have to think of a reply. “I’m good with the towel.”
A pause. “I guess I should have asked before touching your things.” She wouldn’t stop glancing up at his hair.
He’d cut it above his ears, shaved the sides, and slicked it back like he had a million years ago. He hadn’t taken off the beard, but he’d trimmed it to a respectable shape and shaved his neck. He almost looked human.
It was a lie he hated the sight of, but he had to admit, he looked decidedly less serial killery. So he had that going for him.
She gestured to the four-person table she’d somehow bullied over to the windows.
He took a seat across from her, and both of them looked out the window toward the lights across Puget Sound.
“I saw your meds.” It was a confession he hadn’t meant to make, but here they were.
He had so many questions that he didn’t know what to ask first. How much pain are you in right now? How much pain do you live in every day? What can I do to fix it? To alleviate it, to cover you in bubble wrap so that you don’t have to suffer?
“Snooping, were we?” she asked around a soup spoon of curry.
He glanced up to see a sparkle of mischief in her eyes as she chewed.
“Looking for my drawers in your drawers,” he said, shifting in his towel and reaching down to make certain it stayed secure. How did women even do skirts?
Cady’s friends were right—she wasn’t careful enough. Shouldn’t allow strangers into a place where all her medications were not secure. People had been killed for fewer narcotics than she possessed.
She frowned at him, narrowing her eyes and setting her chin at an obstinate angle. He almost hoped it was suspicion in her expression, but it looked more like irritation.
It’d been decades since he’d lowered his eyes in shame. “I shouldn’t have snooped,” he told his pad thai, stabbing it.
She stunned him by snorting. “I’m not mad. There are certain times it’s totally permissible to snoop.”
He blinked.
She shifted in her chair and crafted a huge bite.
Intrigued, he leaned in, pretending not to notice how she watched his shoulders hunch when he put his elbow on the table to steeple his fingers. “You snoop?”
“Not that much…” Her grin melted. “Just like my boyfriends, my girlfriends, my parents, my ex, my ex’s new girlfriend, and one time his boyfriend. My ex’s ex, my doctor, my therapist, my physical therapist, my aunt, distant relatives, employees and employers, and, lastly, any stranger that allows me alone in their bathrooms, kitchens, or libraries. Although I’m weird about bedrooms, because who knows what you’re going to find? And if it’s sanitary…” She made a face and shuddered.
Blink.
She shrugged. “What? I’m a curious woman.”
He blinked again.
“You’re hard to read, Bob. I need you to tell me what you’re thinking,” she said, fondling the chain around her neck.
I want you.
“I—thought…you’d be bothered.”
“I’m bothered that every strong, capable man in my sphere seems to be convinced that my kindness is stupidity,” she said, her even tone not exactly matching the gravitas of the message. “I mean, I listen to the serial killer podcasts and murder porn like every other basic white lady, so I know what men are capable of. But I also know that I’m not going to become cynical and callous on the off chance someone will murder me. I mean, let’s get real here—statistically you’re less likely to kill me than anyone else who has been in this store today. Including a cop and my best friend. So yeah, there’s all sorts of things you could do to me, but I imagine you would probably want to commit murder before a shower and not after.” Her eyes narrowed in mock suspicion. “Unless you are a true psychopath.”
Somewhere in the middle of her tirade, his lips had tilted upward, and he held on to a shaky, unused smile. She’d homed in on that, and since then, her eyes had remained glued to his mouth.
Grabbing his napkin, Fox wiped his beard and his lips. Twice. Then he searched his teeth for hitchhikers with his tongue, as if they would explain her intent gaze.
To avoid doing anything embarrassing, he applied himself to his dinner. A dinner he’d have to compensate her for.
“I have ankylosing spondylitis,” she announced as if she were telling her family she’d decided to be a vegan—confident but defensive. “It’s autoimmune spinal arthritis, painful, chronic, not curable. That’s the TL;DR version.”
He’d have to read up on it. “What does it do?”
“Oh, basically it causes inflammation of my spine and sometimes bonus joints and is generally a fuckwad of awful sauce wrapped in a shit-stained tortilla.”
He chuffed. “Glad we didn’t have Mexican food tonight.”
Her laugh. The most welcome sound in the world.
Talk less, he admonished himself. He was getting too comfortable… Which was saying something at an antique table with only a towel between him and revealing his nut sack to Kevin Costner, who was staring daggers at him from around the corner of the kitchen island.
They ate in silence for several minutes as she seemed to take social cues from him. After a few bites, the atmosphere relaxed into something like companionship.
When she shivered, he stood up and shut the door, but not before gulping in deep, cleansing breaths.
The air was getting closer. The night was colder, but the fireplace seemed to be blasting out heat like a fucking supernova.
“I…I don’t know why, but I thought you were older,” she shyly informed his turned back. “How long have you been…in town?”
He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, lest he give something away. He had to work harder on his voice. On the shift in pacing and diction. “Longer than your sheriff likes.”
He’d settled into the mountains three years ago and had expected the wilds to take him down long ago.
Bears were kind of small here.
An embarrassed little groan escaped her. “I’m sorry about Ethan. He’s protective, and…there have been some issues with a little more violence than usual this tourist season. The town is a bit divided on some things, and—”
He held up his hand when he turned to face her. “Protecting you is his job.”
This time she looked down at her food, and the slightest hint of peach crawled up her cheeks. “There’s protective, and there’s condescending. I’m a woman with a condition, not a child.”
He nodded, sufficiently chastised. “Fair point.”
“Where did you learn to patch a roof?”
“The army,” he answered honestly.
“Oh?” Both eyebrows shot up.
On deployment, he’d had to put up and take down a base in a hurry. It often needed a lot of patching if there was bad weather or…explosions, heavy artillery fire, drunk marines—
“Did you spend a long time in the army?” she asked, her eyes alight with interest.
“Too long…” he said without thinking, the incredible food turning to ashes in his mouth.
“I see.” It was the first time he’d read a note of pity on her face.
He didn’t like it.
He ate the rest of his food as if it were the military mess hall, doing his best to remind her that he was an uncouth creature. He might be cleaned up ever so slightly, but was no different than before.
No less dangerous. No less horrible.
For her part, she chatted about the roof, invited him to an upcoming book club, whereupon he’d be joined by other local un-homed who liked to show up for coffee, tea, and snacks and to listen to the hilarity. Her conversation escaped in a stream of nervous consciousness, but he didn’t mind. It saved him from having to say anything. To explain himself. All he had to do was focus on her voice, the only thing distracting him from how badly he needed to run a few miles to get this extra adrenaline out of his system.
He’d been inside too long.
“I need to go.” He stood abruptly, and the chair scraped loud enough to freak the cat into some kind of Scooby-Doo scuffle on the wood floors.
She stood as well, hurrying to swallow her bite. “Oh, okay. Let me get your stuff out of the…”
“I’ll do it.”
Turning his back to her, he tugged his things out of the dryer, barely giving their continued dampness another thought. He’d freeze to death if he had to.
Almost too frenzied to remember that she was most certainly watching him, he yanked on his boxer briefs and thermals. Jeans came next, then undershirt, long-sleeve tee, jacket, flannel, and sweater.
“Thanks for dinner.” Grabbing his socks last, he strode to the door and picked up his boots. “I’ll be here tomorrow to start on the roof.”
“I’ll walk you out,” she offered, wiping her mouth and making her way to the door.
“No, I can—”
“I’ve already locked everything up and gated the back steps to the balcony. I need to let you out the front so I can lock it again and pull down the new storefront security grate.” She scrunched her face into an expression of distaste.
“Sure.” He gestured for her to go ahead of him, hating himself for wishing she could walk faster. A cold sweat had begun to spread across his skin, and the tremors would hit any moment if he didn’t get the fuck out.
As they reached the second-floor landing, his clothes were already starting to chill in the late-fall darkness. She didn’t heat the store in the evenings, probably to save money.
After turning on one overhead chandelier, she moved to the door, reaching to open it before freezing in place.
“OMG,” she whispered, stepping back until her shoulder blades met his chest.
He steadied her with gentle hands on her upper arms, and his heart kicked even higher at the note of pure horror in her voice.
He searched for danger, but couldn’t find a thing in the shadows.
“The ghosts put Edgar the raven back over the door.” She pointed, eyes owlish and mouth agape.
Fuck.
Fox knew he’d placed all the taxidermized weirdos in one place, facing the corner of the far wall, where their soulless, creepy-ass faces belonged.
Starting with that goddamn googly-eyed raven.
But there it was, staring down at them with its one wonky eye.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he muttered.
But he knew that someone had to have come into the shop and moved that raven…
All while they were upstairs together.