“You want something to drink?” He walked into the kitchen off the living room. “I’ve got cokes, beer, and red wine.”
“I’m fine.” She gazed around the room. She couldn’t call him a neatnik. There were a few books on the sofa and a pair of shoes beside the coffee table. The decor was eclectic yet masculine. A toffee-colored sectional and leather chair filled one corner of the room, while a washed-oak entertainment cabinet with a plasma television and stereo equipment filled the other side. The pen and ink drawings on the wall were interesting.
“Bathroom?” She studied one framed print of a lone wolf.
“First door on the right.” He motioned down the hall. “I forgot something in the car. I’ll be right back.”
She darted inside the bathroom. When she heard the front door shut, she shot straight to the medicine cabinet. Sure it was rude to nose around in a person’s personal domain, but please, what woman hadn’t done it? Besides, she was desperate. She needed dirt on this man, and she needed it fast.
She moved some headache meds around and frowned. No condoms, no weird rash medicines. A look under the cabinet and in the drawers proved just as boring. No porn or sex toys. Even the toilet looked reasonably clean. Which was good.
She unzipped her jeans while visually sizing up the room. No bathroom art. A green and white striped shower curtain, and a couple of well-used green towels.
Bladder happy, Sue zipped up, washed, and hurried out of the bathroom. She heard some sort of soft cry and stopped to listen. The sound faded. Maybe the tenants next door had a baby.
Moving down the hall, she walked to the entertainment case. She’d seen a framed photo on a shelf and wanted to check it out before Jason returned. The picture showed a younger Jason dressed in a police uniform with his arm around an older lady. Sue assumed it was his mother, although they looked nothing alike. Maybe he favored his father. The father who wasn’t in the photograph.
Sue knew all about fatherless photographs. Her chest filled with sympathy. Had Jason’s dad died, too?
She picked up the frame. Her heart clutched at the empty spot beside Jason in the picture.
The door opened. She dropped the frame back on the shelf and moved to the books. Checking out his reading material was less like snooping. Her gaze flitted over a couple of thrillers and a biography of one of Houston’s well-known anchormen. Then her gaze stuck when it came across the spines of four familiar novels.
Her novels.
She looked back at him. “You bought my books?”
He fumbled through the note pad he’d tucked inside his glove compartment earlier. “Yeah.” He glanced up. “You say that as if you’re surprised.”
“Why would you buy my books?”
He looked genuinely puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“But…you never came to any of my signings.”
She bit her lip, hoping he didn’t think she’d been disappointed. She really hadn’t been, but when she’d gotten his address from Lacy after the wedding to put him on her mail-out list, she had sort of expected he might tag along when Lacy and Chase had made their appearances.
Okay, so maybe she had been disappointed.
“Is that why you dropped me from your mailing list?” He raised an eyebrow. “Because I used to get these newsletters and notices about your books, and they stopped.”
“I didn’t drop you from my mailing list. Melissa takes care of all that.”
And that was the truth. Well, partly. Melissa did take care of that; but yeah, after being kissed senseless and waiting two weeks for a phone call, she’d made her own decision.
“Axe Jason Dodd from the list,” she’d told her agent. She hadn’t given a reason.
Not that she didn’t have a good reason. She’d had no desire to know he’d have the pleasure of receiving another invitation to a book signing that he wouldn’t attend.
Jason studied her. Right then he looked more like a cop than she’d ever seen him.
“What?” She wished her eyelid would stop twitching.
He held up a hand. “I didn’t say a word.”
She glanced again at the books. “Did you read them or just buy them for show?” Turning back, she attempted to study him with the same polygraph-vision he’d used on her.
“The covers matched my decor.” He made a face. “Of course I read them. I told you I liked your books.” Tapping his finger against his note pad, he moved into the kitchen. A moment later he stuck his head out the door. “Maybe now you’ll let me critique your work, huh? I could help you with police procedure information.”
“I’ve got someone who does that.” She moved to the kitchen door.
“Really?” Jason picked up the phone. There was just a bit too much surprise in his voice.
“What’s that mean?”
He shrugged. “Nothing, it’s just…”
“Just what?” she asked.
His brow creased, and he looked like a guy who’d just stepped in a pile of poo and couldn’t figure out how to escape. But it was too late, he’d stepped in it.
“Out with it,” Sue snapped.
He shook his head. “Okay, there were just a few incidents in your books that seemed a little more like fiction and less like fact. I thought a cop could give you the real low-down.”
“What incidents?” She moved into the kitchen and stood across the table from him. “But before you start tossing out too many criticisms, you should know that my source is a real cop.”
Jason frowned. “It’s not Martin, is it?” He pointed the phone at her. “I told you, that man’s a jerk.”
“No. It’s someone I respect and trust a lot more than Martin.”
Jason studied her. “And a lot more than me, obviously.”
She gave Jason a snarling smile. “He comes to my auto-graphings.”
“Well, whoever it is, he’s telling you only what you want to hear to impress you—probably to get in your pants. That or he’s a crackerjack cop who doesn’t—”
“I’m sure Chase would appreciate your opinion.”
Jason’s eyes grew round. “Chase helps you? He reads your work before it’s published?”
“Yeah. Well, he doesn’t read the book. I just go to him for advice.”
Sue was about to fire a list of questions about the “too fictionalized” incidents when the phone in Jason’s hands rang. He held up a finger as he answered.
“Jason Dodd,” he said into the receiver, sounding like a cop again. “Hi.” The cop tone vanished. “Yeah, I called you.”
So he called some people. Just not Sue.
He stared away from her. “No, I’m house-sitting for Chase.”
Sue walked out of the kitchen. Obviously he didn’t want whomever he spoke with to know he was babysitting her, because he hadn’t mentioned her. While being out of the room felt less intrusive, she continued to listen.
“I forgot my charger. Is everything okay?” He moved to the door and stared at her.
She feigned interest in his book collection again.
“No, I’ll see you in a couple of days. Me, too.” He hung up.
Me, too, what? Had someone said I love you?
Not wanting him to see the questions in her eyes, Sue didn’t turn around. Not that she had a personal stake in knowing the caller’s identity. However, as she expected, Dodd’s issues were surfacing. The man apparently had a girlfriend but felt no remorse for making advances, kissing her, and playing sexual head games.
The realization stung, and she didn’t quite understand the feeling. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it—to discover all his dirty little secrets?
She heard him walk up behind her. “You sure you don’t want something to drink?”
“I’m fine.” She stared at the framed photograph. “Is this your mom?”
When he didn’t answer, she glanced back at him. “Sort of,” he said.
“Sort of? Like you sort of have a cat?” Like you sort of have a girlfriend? And you sort of didn�
�t tell her that you were hanging out and sort of kissing me all day?
His brow wrinkled. “That’s strange.”
“What’s strange? That you sort of have a mom and sort of have a cat? Yeah, I agree, it’s kind of strange.”
He shot her a puzzled look. “I’m talking about my cat not coming out to greet me.” He stepped into the living room. “It usually greets me at the door.”
“Kitty, kitty,” Sue said, and then looked back at Jason. “What’s its name?”
He gave her a blank stare. “I haven’t named it.”
Sue walked over to the curtains, one of Hitchcock’s hiding spots, and peered behind them. Nothing. “So, it’s just a kitten?”
“No.”
“How long have you had it?”
“Six or seven months.”
Sue’s mouth dropped open. “And you haven’t named it yet?”
He shot her another one of his looks, part guilt, part knowing he might have just stepped in another pile of poo. “I haven’t named it because I’m not sure if I’m keeping it.”
“Commitment-phobe,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She got on her knees and peered under the sofa. “Is it a boy or girl?” Jason didn’t answer, and she glanced up him. “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
He shrugged. “That’s personal information. I saw no need to investigate.”
“Your vet didn’t tell you if it was a boy or girl?”
“The cat hasn’t been sick.”
“And it hasn’t had its shots either.” She gave him a serious eye roll. Bad pet owner. She added to his list of issues.
“Shots? What kind of shots does a cat need?”
She didn’t even look up. “You have a pet for six months, you don’t take it to the vet, don’t name it, don’t know its sex, and you still haven’t decided if you’re going to keep it?” Oh yeah, his issues were rising to the surface all right. She got back to her feet and looked around. “Maybe you let it outside and it sort of found a better owner.”
He frowned. “No, it’s inside. I made sure before I left for Chase’s.”
“Is it nervous around strangers?” she asked. “Perhaps it just doesn’t like me.”
“No, it liked all the other girls.”
“All of them.” She shot him another look.
“You sound jealous.”
“Please.” She hoped that sounded convincing. Not that she was jealous. Nope. Not at all.
He looked at his watch. “I need to make a call or I’m going to miss someone. Can you look in my bedroom? It’s probably asleep on my bed.”
“You sleep with it but don’t know its name. Just like a man.”
He ignored her snide remark. “Look under the bed, too.” He started punching in numbers.
Sue took several steps down the hall then hesitated. The idea of going into Jason’s bedroom brought a new bout of flutters to her stomach. Sue heard him talking to someone about running a check on the tag number he’d called in earlier. She listened in.
“I didn’t think you’d catch him.”
So, they hadn’t found the car that was possibly following them.
“Yeah, call me when you get something,” Jason said. “Oh. I have another license number to run.”
She continued down the hall to the last door on the right. It had been left ajar, and she could see the king-size, unmade bed with mussed black sheets.
Black? What kind of guy had black sheets?
The kind who sort of had a cat and didn’t name it.
“Kitty?” She hit the light switch. Her gaze was searching…snooping…Though she didn’t know why. She’d gotten all the dirt she needed. Jason Dodd was full of issues. So why hadn’t the attraction vanished?
“Find it?” he called.
“Not yet.” She got down on her hands and knees and poked her head under the bed. She found a few dust bunnies and…was that…?
Sliding deeper beneath the bed, she confirmed her suspicions. Yup. A condom wrapper. Ribbed and…extra large?
Extra large.
Sue’s mouth went dry. She put herself in reverse and bumped into something solid. That something solid turned out to be the owner of the extra large.
She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes traveling to his zipper. Having never seen anything more than a medium, she couldn’t help but be curious. She remembered feeling that hardness against her this morning but hadn’t realized it’d been an extra large.
“Is it under there?” he asked.
“No.” She forced her eyes upward. The temptation to tell him what she had found stirred, but wouldn’t that sound as if she were jealous?
Suddenly, Sue heard that noise again: the soft whine. She got up and followed the cries to the closet door that stood ajar. Pulling it fully open, she peered inside. There, in the corner, between a couple pairs of shoes, she saw “it.”
Sue looked back at Jason standing at the foot of the bed. “I found your cat.”
“Good.”
She smirked. “And I think I have the answer to that other question.”
His brow crinkled. “What question?”
“It’s a girl. And you could hold off giving her a name. She’ll probably answer to Mama just fine.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “No!” He popped his head in the closet. “Fuck.”
Sue grinned. “Guess this is one of the downsides of not investigating, huh?”
Twenty minutes after finding the cat, Jason sat at his desk in the second-bedroom-turned-study trying to figure out why his printer didn’t want to print the copy of Sue’s book. Sue sat on the floor, whispering to Mama and her five multicolored kittens. When the beast had kept leaving her young to join the two humans in the study, Jason had found a box and moved them in there, too.
What Jason would have liked was for Sue to join him and his cat in his bedroom. But Sue had been sending serious back-off messages. It didn’t make a bit of sense, but he respected her wishes. For now. Jason Dodd wasn’t a quitter. And he knew when a woman wanted him. Sue wanted him; she was just…fighting it for some reason.
The phone rang and, flustered about his printer, the overpopulation of felines, and being sexually frustrated, he hit the speakerphone and bit out a greeting. “Hello?”
“You’re supposed to be at my place.” Chase’s voice boomed over the speakerphone.
Jason turned to Sue. Blue eyes wide, she mouthed the word, No.
The fact that she didn’t want Chase to know she was here stung, but then Jason realized he wasn’t quite ready to spill the beans yet either. God knew what Lacy would say. He loved Chase’s wife and felt pretty certain she felt the same about him, but she didn’t seem to care too much for his lifestyle.
Jason looked back at the phone. “I came home to feed my cat.”
“Your cat?” Chase said. “You never told me you had a cat.”
Jason focused his frown on Sue, who obviously enjoyed watching him getting called on the cat issue by someone else. “I didn’t know I needed permission. What are you, the cat police?”
“No,” Chase said. “Look, the reason I called is that I’ve already got a hysterical wife on my hands, and I’m getting a little concerned myself.”
“What’s wrong?” Jason unplugged and replugged in his printer.
“It’s about Sue.”
Jason stopped fiddling and looked at the woman in question. “What about her?”
“Well, after the rat incident, I made a few inquiries. This afternoon, I called and got my voice mail messages.”
“And?” Jason held his breath.
“And I think I might know who sent her that dead rat.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Who do you think sent the rat?” Jason asked.
Sue jumped to her feet.
“Sue’s going to kill me for doing it, but her mother insisted,” Chase said. “And—”
Sue bolted forward. “I’ll kill you later! Right now tell me
who you think sent the rat.”
Jason saw the frightened look in her eyes, and he took her hand in his.
“Sue?” Chase’s voice shot up an octave. “Jason, was—”
“Yes. It’s me.” Sue moved closer. “Tell me what you know.”
“I…Where…Hot damn! I knew you two would be good together.”
“We’re not together.” Sue jerked her hand from his and scowled at the speakerphone.
“Why didn’t you go to Mexico?” Chase asked. “When you weren’t at your hotel, Lacy had me calling every freaking hotel in Mexico trying to find you.”
“The trip…I—” Sue closed her mouth.
“The doctor had an emergency,” Jason answered for her. “Now, what’s up?”
“If you weren’t home tomorrow, I’d be in Mexico looking for your ass. Lacy’s been—”
“Chase.” Jason’s frustration rang clear in his voice. “What do you have?” He caught Sue’s hand again and ran his thumb over her knuckles.
Chase let out a frustrated sigh. “I did a background check on the foot doctor and something came up.”
“What came up?” Jason wrapped an arm around Sue’s waist.
“For starters, he has a record. He had a fetish for stealing nice cars back when he was younger. Did almost a year in the pen in the early nineties. Heck, you might want to check the plates on his Porsche. Anyway, he was also looked at for insurance fraud back in Georgia.”
“Why do you think he sent the rat?” Jason knew neither of the two listed crimes would lead a good cop to presume the man guilty of stalking. And Chase was a good cop, even if he had given Sue some weak advice on her books.
“I don’t think he sent the rat,” Chase said. “His wife—”
“You mean ex-wife. Right?” Sue leaned against him. “Please tell me you meant ex-wife.”
Hurt filled Sue’s eyes. The emotion bounced around Jason’s rib cage.
“Sorry. But according to what my guy uncovered, he’s still married. Even has a four-year-old son. But you’re not the only one he’s lied to. He had an affair with a woman last year. Told her he was divorced. She believed it until his wife turned stalker. The lady had to get a restraining order against the wife after she purposely ran over the woman’s dog.”
Divorced, Desperate And Dating Page 12
