Blame It on Texas

by Christie Craig

  The more he thought about why someone might want to get rid of Zoe, the more eager he was to get back to her. Then he tried to recall what he had learned in the ten minutes he’d watched of the damn show that started it all. The child’s body had been burned according to the authorities. Cause of death had been listed as violent. It hadn’t been pretty. Remembering he had Zoe’s cell number, relief went straight to his solar plexus. He took a break and gave her a call.

  The phone rang four times and then went to voice mail. He left a message and asked her to call him back. When his phone didn’t immediately ring with her return call, he grew more concerned.

  Looking up the diner’s number, he called and asked to speak to her. He was informed that Zoe had left work an hour ago. He gave his name and was about to ask for Zoe’s home address when the waitress said she couldn’t talk. She hung up.

  Shit!

  He dialed back, but no one answered. After a quick, almost-rude good-bye to Dallas and the others, Tyler headed back to the diner. As he drove, Zoe’s smile flashed in his head again, and he found himself pushing the speed limit. He just hoped the knot in his gut was the huevos rancheros and not a foreshadowing of something bad.

  When he got to the diner, the parking lot was full, so he had to park on the street. He walked inside and sought out Dixie.

  “Hey.” He stopped beside her and a table of three women. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  She gestured to her customers. “I’m kind of busy here.”

  “Yeah, but I promise only to take a minute.”

  “Let me get this order,” she said.

  He looked over at the table where Zoe had spilled a tray full of food on him, and her smile filled his mind. Looking back at Dixie casually conversing with her customers, his patience snapped.

  “Okay, I’ve waited long enough,” he said. “I need to know Zoe’s home address. Now.”

  Her eyes widened, and she led him away from the table. “Why would you think I’d give it to you? That girl never dropped a French fry until you showed up. You walk in and say something to her, make her so nervous that she slings plates of food everywhere.”

  “I’ll pay for the expense,” he said.

  “I don’t give a crap about the money—it’s her I’m worried about.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Dixie’s expression grew hard. “Look here, buster. I know all about you and what some people think you did.”

  Tyler felt the punch straight to his gut. He ought to be used to people’s reaction by now, but it still surprised him. “Then you also know I was exonerated. Look, she’s not answering her phone and I’m worried about her.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “I think she would. She trusted me enough to talk to me this morning.”

  Another waitress walked by. “Zoe seems to be the popular girl of the day,” she said as if she’d been listening in on the conversation. “She’s had two people calling for her.”

  “I called once,” Tyler said. “Who was the other person?”

  “He didn’t say. But he hung up as soon as I told him she would be getting off in an hour.”

  “Does she usually have anyone calling for her?” Tyler looked to Dixie.

  “No.” Worry made the wrinkles in the older woman’s face deepen. “The girl’s a loner. She doesn’t know anyone in town.”

  His gut tightened even more. Logic told him he might be overreacting, but instinct told him differently. His stomach clenched harder. It definitely wasn’t the huevos rancheros. “I want her address and I want it now.”

  Tyler called Zoe at least four more times while he drove, all of which went to voice mail. It only made him drive faster. He knew where the high-ticketed spots were for the Glencoe PD, and he avoided them. Getting closer to the address Dixie had given him, he recognized the neighborhood as one that had the highest crime rates on this side of town. Why was Zoe living here? Was she hoping to become a statistic? Gorgeous redheaded Alabamian falls prey to Texas crime.

  He turned onto her street and slammed on his brakes when he caught an address. Half a block down the road he found it. Her place was actually a run-down house turned into run-down apartments. He actually remembered a suspect he’d investigated once who lived here a few years back. The place had been a pigsty then.

  He parked in the street, and the tightness in his chest lessened when he saw her car. But the hair on the back of his neck stood up as if someone was watching him. Looking around, he reached into his shirt and released his shoulder holster.

  He got to her door and knocked. No one answered. Leaning close, he called out. “Zoe? It’s Tyler.”

  He waited about fifteen seconds before his patience wore out. He moved to the window. Instead of a curtain, there was a sheer piece of fabric. He could see right through it. Perfect for a Peeping Tom… or worse.

  His gaze shifted from the emptiness to the few items filling the room. The thread-worn and stained sofa looked like someone had picked it up from somebody else’s curb. The carpet had bald spots, and, while it looked like it used to be orange, it now matched the dirty brown sofa.

  Unsure how to proceed, he moved back to the door and knocked with enthusiasm. Finally, he reached for the knob and turned it. It actually opened. A frown tightened his mouth. She lived in the gutter of town and didn’t bother to lock her door?

  He stepped inside. “Zoe?”

  No one answered. He stuck his hand under his shirt and gripped his gun, tempted to bring it out, but he didn’t want to stumble across her and scare her. Assuming she was here.

  His gaze shifted left to right, looking for signs of a struggle. Nothing looked out of place. He took a few more steps.

  “Zoe?” he called again, and then moved to the table. A laptop sat on it. Giving it a glance, he then looked into the tiny kitchen. As much of a dump as the place was, there wasn’t a crumb on the faded Formica counter or a dirty dish in the sink.

  He moved back to the table and noticed the laptop was on. He touched it and the screen woke up. It took about a second for him to recognize the article. “Great.” She knew all his dirty little secrets. The knowledge stung, although he wasn’t sure why. The whole damn world knew. And half of them still considered him a dirty cop, like Dixie at the diner.

  Beside the laptop was a half-empty bag of baby carrots, a bowl of what looked like dressing, and her cell phone. He touched the bowl to see if it was still cold. Nope. He started to step away from the table, when he saw her purse on a kitchen chair.

  If her car and purse were here, where the hell was she?

  He looked back to the hall. It obviously led to the bedroom and bath. A fear that he’d catch her stepping out of the shower had a vision filling his head. The fear quickly changed to something completely different. To cover his ass, he called her name as he moved down the hall.

  The bathroom door, halfway down the hall, stood open. A new shower curtain—a bright red and green checkered pattern—hung from a shower rod. Somehow he knew Zoe had added that little furnishing. The bathroom smelled like a clean woman. Stationed at different places in the bathroom, he saw the feminine-smelling soap, some newish-looking towels, and a few small bottles of skin care products. What the bathroom didn’t contain was the very moist, fresh-smelling, and naked Zoe he’d been envisioning.

  He started into the bedroom. The thought hit that she might be asleep and hadn’t heard him. In which case, she’d probably be upset that he’d invited himself in. His gaze shot straight to the bed when he stepped in the room.

  Empty. A blanket was stretched out on top of the bed. Not so neatly in place that one could consider the bed made, but enough to say someone had given it a little effort. A stack of library books stood on the floor beside the bed.

  Tyler moved in to see her reading taste.

  He found a nonfiction book titled Jump-Start Your Brain; a romance novel with a shirtless hunk on the cover; a biography of Helen Keller, that he’d
read; and another book on social psychology, that he’d read as well. The woman had eclectic taste. He frowned. Zoe Adams wasn’t going to fit into his new class of datable women. As crazy as it seemed, he wondered if he’d instinctively known it and if that was why he’d found her so attractive. His same pattern—his romance mistake—shining through.

  He noticed a litter box in the corner. Funny, he hadn’t seen a cat. “Kitty? Kitty,” he said. No creature darted out from under the bed.

  His gaze shifted, and he found her waitress uniform, accompanied by some silky looking underwear, in a basket at the foot of the bed. So she’d come home and changed clothes. And then what?

  His mind created images he didn’t like, such as someone forcing her to go with them. But wouldn’t she have fought them, caused a sign of struggle? For some reason, she didn’t seem the type who’d go down easy. He stood there, trying to figure out what he planned to do next. And that’s when he heard it—footsteps. Someone was in the apartment.

  He had his gun out in a matter of seconds.

  Taking a deep breath, he moved toward the door, his gun held out and ready to shoot.

  Zoe walked into her place and realized she hadn’t even locked the door. She mentally gave herself a good scolding. Considering the reason she’d left in the first place was because of a threatening phone call, you’d think she’d have taken care to lock up.

  Then again, maybe she should take it easy on herself. This was all new for her. It was the first time she’d ever had someone threaten to kill her. Or was it?

  The vague memory whispered into her mind—the one she’d had forever and the one she contributed to her fear of small, dark places. A mental video played in her head, the one of her in a dark closet. Alone. And terrified.

  Her breath caught. It suddenly hit her that whoever was calling her could be the same person who put her in that closet—if it really happened.

  Okay, she was definitely going to lock the door from now on.

  Stopping only a few feet inside her apartment, Zoe looked around for Lucky, her official door greeter. He wasn’t there, running figure eights between her legs, begging to be picked up.

  Chills crawled up her spine, but she shook her head. She was overreacting. It was the middle of the day. Who in their right mind would break into an apartment? Right?

  Right, she answered herself. It was tonight she should be worried about.

  And she would be.

  Holding tight to the plate of leftovers her elderly neighbor had made her bring home, Zoe moved down the hall, thinking any minute the cat would come bolting out of the bedroom. She hadn’t wanted to be alone after the threatening phone call. So when Mrs. Hernandez knocked on her door and invited Zoe to her apartment to celebrate her granddaughter’s birthday, Zoe had slipped twenty dollars from her grocery money account into an envelope and ran out.

  And she’d actually had fun, too, though she’d spent most of her time trying to remember the Spanish she’d learned in high school. Everyone seemed to love hearing her try her best to speak, mangling their language. Zoe had loved being in the midst of company.

  With a heavy plate of the best Mexican food she’d ever tasted, well worth the twenty she’d given as a gift, she got almost to the entrance of her bedroom when she heard it. Someone was in there. Before she saw the person, she saw the gun.

  She didn’t have time to think.

  Didn’t have time to run.

  So she did the only thing she could. With everything she had, she tossed the heavy ceramic plate loaded with Spanish rice and chicken enchiladas at the intruder and let out a scream.

  The plate no sooner left her fingertips than Zoe recognized the man.

  With his right hand occupied with the gun, he used his left arm to block the plate. Unfortunately, the food found its way around his attempted block. And for the second time in one day, she’d showered Tyler Lopez with food.

  “You have to be kidding me.” He looked down at his chest, now covered in bits of rice, tiny cubes of tomatoes, and big chunks of enchiladas smothered in a warm, creamy cilantro sauce. Amazingly, his tone didn’t sound furious, more like surprised.

  She was much closer to the furious mark. “I was going to eat on that for two days.” And considering she’d given her grocery money as a gift, she’d really been happy.

  A blob of enchilada, sauce included, literally rolled down his forehead to his mouth. She saw his tongue swipe across his lips.

  “Damn, that’s good. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.” He smiled, and then, reaching into his food-splattered shirt, he slipped his gun inside.

  She almost found his smile contagious. Almost. “What are you doing in my house?”

  Guilt flashed in his eyes. “I… knocked.”

  “And I obviously didn’t answer.”

  “No, you didn’t. But I saw your car and was worried, so I… came in to make sure you were okay.”

  “And how is that not trespassing?”

  He licked his lips again, to catch another swipe of sauce. “I didn’t say it wasn’t.” His brow creased. He pointed a finger at her. “But you should have locked the door. Then you’d have me on breaking and entering.” He didn’t smile now, but humor brightened his brown eyes.

  “I was next door.” She knew it didn’t excuse her, but it was all she had right now.

  “Doesn’t matter.” The humor faded from his eyes. “Especially in this neighborhood.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I haven’t had a problem with intruders until now.”

  They stood and stared at each other. Why was he here?

  “Did you find out something about my birth certificate?” she asked, telling herself that had to be why he was here. That or he’d somehow guessed how attracted she was to him and how easy it would be to get her in the sack.

  “No,” he said.

  “No, what?” she asked, her mind still on her getting in the sack with him.

  “No, I didn’t find out anything on your birth certificate. But I ran across something else.”

  “What?”

  “It’s in my car.” He pointed down to his shirt. “Can I use your bathroom to clean up?”

  She nodded, and he stepped inside the bathroom. He didn’t shut the door. She heard the water turn on. The pipes started groaning as they always did.

  “Do you want me to rinse out your shirt so the sauce won’t stain?”

  He looked at her as she stepped inside the door. “No, it’s okay.”

  “I don’t mind.” She eyed the short-sleeve button-down, a solid colored light blue that looked really good on him. “It looks like a nice shirt, and I’m betting it will be ruined if you don’t rinse it out.”

  “Okay.” When he started unbuttoning his shirt, slowly, one button at a time, the awkwardness level in the room shot up way past the normal range and flew right into the “I wish I could fade into the nineteen-eighties’ washed out yellow and green wallpaper” range.

  Too late, she remembered how it had felt to be with him in Dixie’s small office. She shouldn’t be this close; shouldn’t be watching him remove his clothes. She looked away and hoped he didn’t see the embarrassment tiptoeing up her neck and cheeks. God, it wasn’t like she was a virgin or anything. Granted, it had been a long time. But she’d lived with Chris for three years—she was no stranger to sex. Before Chris, she’d been with three other guys. Of course, one was so bad she was hard-pressed to count him as the real deal. It had happened so fast, she wasn’t sure if Tab A had ever made it into Slot B.

  “Here,” he said.

  Forced to look up, her mind somehow stuck on slots and tabs, she took the shirt from his hands. Her first illogical thought was that as good as the shirt had looked on him, it looked even better off.

  Thankfully, he had on one of those ribbed fitted T-shirts—wife-beaters someone had dubbed them. Not that the clingy piece of cotton hid anything, or caused any sort of a negative emotion. Nope. How could there be anything negative about all that bare, w
arm, olive-colored skin that was sculpted with masculine ripples and muscles? But damn, the man had a nice chest and abs. Even the sight of the gun strapped around him didn’t take away from the awesome shoot-me-now view.

  Chin held high, desperately trying to appear unaffected, she gracefully turned and started out. She might have been more successful in portraying the poised role of an experienced woman who didn’t melt at the sight of a man’s half-naked chest, if she hadn’t missed the door and run right into the door frame… with a loud thud.

  She probably looked like a total geek. Okay, not probably, it was more like definitely, but it was the sound of his laugh, deep and sexy, that had a moan slipping from her lips.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHEN THE MAN STEPPED into the kitchen a minute later, Zoe had finished taking her frustration out on his innocent shirt and he’d apparently finished laughing. She wrung out the shirt one more time to get out the excess water. From the corner of her eye, she saw him drop his shoulder holster with his gun down on one end of the table, before he turned toward her.

  “There,” she said, and shook it open. “Good as new.” Then, forcing herself to face him, vowing not to look below his chin, she said, “I’ll just grab a hanger so it can dry.”

  “Thanks,” he said as she brushed past him. And she actually had to brush against him to get past. Not that it was his fault, the kitchen was that small.

  She moved down the hall, attempting not to step into the food or the broken plate. She hoped it wasn’t one of Mrs. Hernandez’s favorite dishes.

  Stepping inside the bedroom, she spotted Lucky now resting on top of the bed. Obviously he’d gotten past his phobia over having a stranger in the house, but not so much that he felt ready to come out and meet their houseguest. She didn’t altogether blame him, either. Tyler Lopez made her feel jumpy, too. Probably not for the same reasons as Lucky, but she could still relate. The lyrics from some song, too sexy for your shirt, echoed in her head.

  She moved closer to the bed, leaned her knee on the mattress, and gave Lucky a gentle scratch under the chin. “It’s gonna be okay,” she whispered. Then she went to the closet and snagged a hanger—something that, as a child, she hadn’t been able to do.