Blame It on Texas

by Christie Craig

  “No.” She gasped, trying to get oxygen down her lungs.

  He hid his battered hand behind him. “Don’t worry, I’m a friendly clown. And I don’t run around in costumes all the time.” And he could get really friendly if she was so inclined. “My niece’s clown canceled and—”

  “Contact.” She blurted out again, as if she hadn’t been listening. Then she slammed her left eye shut and opened again. “I lost it. Got some extras in my car.” She started forward, stopped, and backed up, as if scared to get close.

  He stepped back, giving her room to pass. With only one eye open, she stared at the small space, then back at him. He took another step back and she scooted past—quickly, too. For a second, he could swear he got a whiff of bacon, but that couldn’t be right. Stepping through the doorway, he watched her hotfoot it down the hall.

  “When you get back, let’s introduce ourselves,” he said. Her hips swayed back and forth with her quick steps. Things below the belt did another twitch and almost gave her a standing ovation as she passed through the front door.

  Still smiling, opening and closing his swollen fist—and mentally preparing a list of questions about the new receptionist—he remembered he had a change of clothes in his car. Moving down the hall, he walked out the front door just in time to see a silver Cobalt with Alabama tags speeding out of the parking lot.

  He stared after her. Hadn’t she said she had contacts in her car? So, why was she—?

  “Hey,” Dallas O’Connor said from behind him. “I thought I heard someone come in. You’re back early. How did the party go?”

  Tyler turned around and scratched his head. “She left.”

  “Who left?”

  “The new receptionist.” Tyler ran his left hand over his swollen knuckles again.

  “Ellen was here?” Dallas asked. “She said it would be around three.”

  “Is that her name?” Tyler asked.

  “Yeah, it’s Ellen Wise. You met her. Nikki’s friend. The one who was stabbed at the gallery.”

  “Not the blonde?” Tyler asked.

  “Yeah. She needed a job and we needed a receptionist. But I’m telling both you and Austin that she’s off limits. No screwing with—”

  “That wasn’t Ellen,” Tyler interrupted.

  “Who wasn’t Ellen?”

  “The sexy redheaded chick I found on her hands and knees under my desk.”

  Dallas laughed. “You must have been dreaming.”

  “Seriously, she was…” Tyler walked back to the office with Dallas and his dog Bud following. Stopping at the office door, Tyler looked at his desk. “She was there.” He noticed a piece of paper on the floor and picked it up. It was one of the resumes they’d taken to fill the new position for the Bradford security job. He dropped it on the desk and continued to rub his fist.

  “What happened to your knuckles?” Dallas asked from the doorway.

  Tyler looked up. “My brother-in-law’s teeth got in the way when I broke his nose.”

  “So the party went that well, did it?”

  “Yeah.” Tyler glanced away, not wanting to think about Leo or how pissed his sister was at him. Or the fact that he might have ruined Anna’s party. So instead, he remembered the redhead’s face. Remembered how she’d looked familiar.

  “How bad is your hand?” Dallas asked.

  “Not as bad as his nose,” Tyler answered.

  “Did you confront him about the glass with your prints that the cops found at the crime scene?”

  Tyler tightened his sore fist. Funny how he’d forgotten all about his suspicions that Leo had been one of the people who had framed him and his partners until now. His suspicions hadn’t gone away—his sister was just more important. But now he knew how low Leo could go, and Tyler’s suspicions grew even stronger. His prints had gotten to the crime scene somehow. The fact that they had been found on a glass just like the one his sister owned made him wonder. No way in hell would Tyler ever suspect anyone in his family; but Leo? Oh, yeah.

  “No, I confronted him about hitting my sister.”

  Dallas frowned. “And you didn’t break his neck?”

  “That’s next time,” Tyler said. “She was going through our files.”

  “Your sister?”

  “The redhead.”

  “What files?” Dallas asked.

  “The Bradford file, I think.”

  “You’re serious? There really was someone here?”

  He looked up at Dallas. “Yes, a redhead.”

  “On her hands and knees behind your desk?” Dallas asked.

  Tyler nodded.

  Dallas picked up the file and thumbed through it. “She couldn’t have been here long. I was in the apartment less than five minutes.” He looked around. “Maybe she was just some mixed-up kid looking for change.”

  “She wasn’t a kid. She was full grown.” Tyler held out his hands in front of his chest and flinched when he tried to move his right fist.

  Dallas chuckled. “Then maybe she was looking for Austin.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” Dallas chuckled. “Wasn’t she hot enough?”

  “Hot, yes, but she didn’t look slutty enough,” he said, suddenly feeling annoyed. Annoyed that Austin got all the action, annoyed he couldn’t bring himself to play the game the way Austin did. And the way Dallas had played it before he’d met Nikki.

  Dallas grinned. “He does like ’em cheap and dumb, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” Tyler said, still unable to laugh. The fact that his body had reacted so strongly to the mysterious guest meant one thing: He needed to get laid.

  Getting laid wasn’t the problem. Finding someone who would keep it as simple as he wanted it kept was the issue. When his last three “simple” relationships turned complicated and ended badly, he decided to cease and desist until he figured out what he was doing wrong. If Austin and Dallas could do this, he could do it, too.

  Tyler was smart enough to see patterns, and as soon as he figured out what mistake he kept making, he’d fix it. But it looked as if he needed to fix it fast.

  “You actually caught her going through this file?” Dallas asked.

  “Not exactly. I think she got scared and hid behind the desk when I walked in.”

  Dallas looked up from the file. “There’s nothing in here but resumes. You sure it was this file?”

  “Not sure of anything.” His mind created the image of her again, both the rear view and the front view. “Except…”

  “Except what?”

  I need to get laid. He didn’t answer.

  “Did you get a look at her car and the license number?” Dallas asked.

  The sound of her voice tiptoed through his memory. Even her voice had been familiar. “It was a silver Chevy Cobalt. I didn’t get the number. But it was an Alabama tag. And I know her.”

  “From where?”

  “Not sure. But it’ll come to me. Sooner or later.” And he wasn’t going to have a moment of peace until it did.

  “Shoot!” Why hadn’t she just admitted the truth? Why hadn’t she just told him? Maybe he’d have given her some information or gotten her in contact with the Bradfords. Why had she acted like a scared, guilty rabbit?

  She white-knuckled the steering wheel and kept checking her rearview mirror for a car driven by a broad-shouldered clown with chocolate brown eyes and black hair.

  Why had she run? The question bounced around her head again, but this time the answers spurted back from her still panicked brain. You ran because of the clown suit, because the clown had admitted to “teaching someone a lesson” with his fists. Because… because he might have decided to teach you a lesson for snooping. Because he’d been ogling your girls as they were about to fall out of your bra.

  It could have been worse. He could have been staring at her neck. You ran because you were a scared, guilty rabbit snooping through his files.

  Stopping at a red light, concentrating on not hyperventilating,
Zoe’s cell phone rang. She dug it out from her purse and looked for the number. Unknown caller. “Crap!” Was it the clown? He was a private detective. He found people for a living.

  It couldn’t be. He couldn’t have found her that fast. Could he?

  No. Plus, she’d already had a call earlier from Mr. Unknown Caller. She remembered the whispered voice, Leave. Just a wrong number. “Hello.”

  Just like the earlier call, she heard only breathing.

  “At least ask me what color my underwear is,” she snapped at the same time her patience did.

  The whisper came on the line again. “Get the hell away before it’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Her question was answered by the silence of a dead line.

  “That’s just rude,” she muttered as the ominous click from the phone seeped into her chest.

  She tossed the phone in the passenger seat and went back to white-knuckling the steering wheel. Just a wrong number. Why would someone threaten her? Unless… unless someone had figured out the reason she was here. But why? Who? How? She hadn’t told anyone… yet.

  Maybe she should. Tell someone, that is. But who could she trust?

  Certainly not a clown who used his fists to teach people lessons.

  Tyler stared at his recently written list of questions. List making was his slightly obsessive/compulsive way of organizing his thoughts. Not that he really liked admitting he was slightly OCD, because he wasn’t… well, not really.

  Six of the questions related to redheads he’d met in the last couple of months, three related to his sister Sam, and one on why he couldn’t find the right kind of woman to have casual sex with. When he heard the front door to the office open, his gaze shot up. While he knew it was unlikely to be her, he sat there, hoping a sexy redhead would appear in the doorway. That would take care of at least seven of his questions.

  The footsteps neared and a figure appeared.

  Not the redhead. Just Rick Clark, a detective with the Miller PD, and a recent part-time security guard they’d hired to secure the Bradford place.

  While security wasn’t really the agency’s gig, after a recent break-in at the Bradford mansion that appeared to be an inside job, Mr. Bradford’s lawyer had hired them to find the culprits. They had, and then he requested they handle hiring the replacements for the three guilty guards.

  When Tyler had recommended hiring Rick—who had a great resume and came recommended by Dallas’s brother Tony—Dallas hadn’t been thrilled.

  Supposedly, there was some grudge between Dallas and Rick, but Dallas had conceded that it had nothing to do with his work ability and had backed down. So Rick got the Bradford job.

  While penning his list of questions to be answered, Tyler realized Rick might have some info on the redhead. It was a long shot, but Tyler had discovered most answers stemmed from long shots, so he generally looked there first. Especially since no matter how hard he tried to remember where he’d run across the sexy redhead, he’d come up empty. And he wasn’t used to that.

  “What’s up?” Rick said.

  Tyler motioned to a chair. “How’s the Bradford gig going?”

  “Boring, why?” His brows tightened. “Someone complain about me? Fuck, I don’t need this job that bad.”

  “No, you got a thumbs-up. I was just… curious if you’ve hit any snags.”

  “Snags?”

  Tyler considered how to answer and then just said it. “Sexy redheads?”

  “My kind of snags.” Rick laughed. “But you know, someone did mention having to run a pretty redhead off at the gate.”

  Tyler jotted down the question: Who was the redhead at Bradford’s place? “Did they get any info on her?”

  “All I was told was that they thought she was an Anna Nicole wannabe, thinking if she screwed Old Man Bradford a few times before he passed, she might get her greedy hands on his money. You know women, they think what they got between their legs is—”

  A loud clearing of a throat echoed from the office door. Tyler looked up.

  Ellen Wise, their new receptionist, stood there. She held her hands over the ears of a little blond girl who looked to be around the same age as Tyler’s niece, Anna.

  “Sorry,” Tyler and Rick said at the same time, and Tyler realized they would probably have to clean up their act a bit once Ellen came on board. Not that it hadn’t already been polished with Nikki hanging around.

  “I swung by to pick up the paperwork I needed to fill out,” Ellen said.

  The little girl pulled her mother’s hands from over her ears. “I’ve heard bad words before. Yesterday at school, Mark got put in time-out for telling the teacher she had the face of a puckered butthole.”

  “And if you repeat it again, you’ll get a time-out.” Ellen sounded every bit like a mother.

  Tyler bit his cheek to keep from smiling. “Ellen, this is Rick Clark. He’s—”

  “We’ve met.” Rick grinned at Ellen.

  Ellen tilted her head as if confused. “We have?”

  “I worked with Tony O’Connor on your case.” He smiled. “Saw you at the hospital.”

  Ellen’s face brightened to a shade of embarrassed pink. “You’re not one of the guys I…”—she covered the girl’s ears again—“ ‘propositioned,’ are you?”

  “You mean I wasn’t the only one?” He slapped his hand over his heart. “Now, I’m offended.”

  “It was the drugs talking,” she said, and then her eyes widened as if she realized what she’d said. “Not drug drugs. The morphine they gave me after the surgery when I was stabbed.”

  The little girl pulled her mother’s hands from her ears again. “Why can grown-ups say dirty words but kids can’t?”

  “I didn’t say a dirty word,” Ellen said. “It was a grown-up word.”

  “What’s a grown-up word?” the girl asked.

  “I’ll tell you when you’re a grown-up,” Ellen said.

  Tyler stood, found the papers on Dallas’s desk, and handed them to Ellen. Then he held out his hand to the little girl. “I don’t think we’ve met. My name’s Tyler.”

  “My name is Britney Wise. I’m six,” she said with pride. She took his hand and gave it a good shake. Then her eyes went to Rick. “My mama was stabbed.”

  “Yes, I know,” Rick said. “That was awful, wasn’t it?”

  “Not really.” Britney looked back up at Tyler. “She got to eat a lot of ice cream.”

  Rick laughed. “I’ll bet she shared it with you.”

  “Some,” Britney said.

  Tyler chuckled. “I have a niece who turned six today,” he said, but his smile had to be forced when he thought about Anna and her mother and the possibility that they were both pissed at him. He needed to call his sister and let her tell him what a terrible brother and uncle he was. Let her get mad so she could start getting over it. And she would get over it. But probably not in time for him to attend breakfast tomorrow. Which meant, he couldn’t go. But being a no-show to the family breakfast was a criminal offense.

  “Thank you.” Ellen held up the papers, making Tyler realize he’d gotten lost in his thoughts again—a bad habit of his. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

  “I look forward to it,” Tyler said, and he did. Ellen was attractive, but he’d been a lot happier when he’d thought their new receptionist was the redhead.

  Tyler watched Ellen gaze toward Rick. “Nice to meet you… again.”

  “You, too. Oh, I’ll see you around. I’m in and out of here,” Rick said, and Tyler didn’t miss the way he said it with interest. Ellen nodded and walked out. Rick wheeled his chair to the door to watch her move down the hall. When he looked back at Tyler, he grinned. “Damn, I’m gonna have to take her up on her original offer.”

  “She’s a mother,” Tyler said. For some reason, women with kids were off limits for him. He liked kids too much and could remember with detail how he felt about the boyfriends who’d come calling for his mom.

  Without warning, Tyler
found himself hoping the sexy redhead didn’t have a kid.

  “And how do you think she got to be a mother?” Rick asked.

  Tyler frowned. “Word of warning. She’s friends with Dallas’s fiancée. I’d be careful.”

  “I’m always careful.” Rick grinned.

  Tyler suspected his warning had fallen on deaf ears.

  Rick’s cell rang, and he pulled it out and looked at the number. “Damn.”

  “You need to take it?” Tyler asked.

  “No, I’ll deal with it later.” Frowning, Rick tucked the phone back in his pocket.

  “About the redhead. Can you ask around and see if anyone’s got anything on her?”

  Curiosity sparked in Rick’s green eyes. “I can, but why?”

  Tyler debated telling Rick, but remembered Dallas’s brother vouching for the man. “Don’t mention it, but I found a redhead snooping around the office, and it appeared as if she might have been interested in the Bradford file.”

  Rick leaned in. “What was in the file?”

  “Nothing. That’s why I don’t want you mentioning it. I’m just curious. And seriously, keep it low key, if you know what I mean.” Tyler didn’t want to stir up anyone’s suspicions, especially when he wasn’t a hundred percent sure the redhead had anything to do with the Bradfords.

  “I’m working second shift this evening. I’ll ask around.”

  “Thanks.”

  The redhead’s face filled his head again and so did the certainty that he knew her. He wanted answers, and he wanted them now.

  “They were nice.” Britney skipped out into the parking lot.

  “Yes, they were,” Ellen answered, and ran a hand over her daughter’s soft blond hair. But she was having second thoughts about accepting the job. Noel would give her hell. She could already hear his list of reasons ringing in her ear.

  Do you know what kind of people walk into a PI office?

  What kind of mother works in a place like that?

  You’re working for a bunch of ex-cons. Are you trying to get yourself stabbed again?

  How Noel could blame her for getting stabbed was beyond her. But being a lawyer, and one that seldom lost a case, he had a way of twisting things to work in his favor. He’d twisted her, hadn’t he? Like a pretzel, leaving her heart mangled.