by Liliana Hart
FBI Agent Matt Savage was something of an enigma. I hadn’t known at the time when I’d moved into the little rent house in Savannah that he lived across the street. It was safe to say his law enforcement skills were somewhat unorthodox. If Nick was a fine wine then Savage was straight up tequila. You knew you’d regret it in the morning, but it was a hell of a good time while you were doing it.
There’d been definite chemistry between us, but I knew he wasn’t built for the long haul. He was all flash and no longevity. Did I regret not taking a walk on the wild side with him while I had the chance? Oh, yeah. Was I a little pissed that Phoebe had once again been the one to take the plunge and live dangerously? Most definitely. But life’s a bitch and then you die. There was no looking back now. Especially now that Savage had dipped his wick into Phoebe, hypothetically speaking. There were some things sisters didn’t share.
Maxwell Gunter looked to be mid-thirties and a little buttoned up for Phoebe’s taste. She had a tendency to fall fast and hard when it came to life and men, and if the man couldn’t keep up then he didn’t last long with Phoebe. This guy looked like a banker. Or a lawyer. He wore a gray suit, a white shirt, and a boring gray tie. His glasses were horn-rimmed—which granted were kind of cute—and his hair was parted and combed neatly on one side.
“Oh, Max and I aren’t dating,” Phoebe piped in. “Unless you want to give it a go, Max.” She winked at Maxwell and I shook my head as his cheeks flushed red and he started to stammer.
“Take it easy, Phebes. I don’t think he’s used to women like you.”
“Darling, there are no other women like me.”
“That’s the God’s honest truth, sister dear.”
“Max came at my request,” my mother said. “He sits next to me in my pottery class. He makes the most beautiful fertility sculptures.”
“And no doubt you told him about your two daughters,” I said under my breath. But mom had always had ears like an elephant.
She smiled at me and I recognized it as the same smile I’d given Detective Graham just a few minutes before—saccharine sweet and up to no good.
“Max is a dear friend of mine, Addison Holmes, and last time I checked I was allowed to invite friends to dinner without an ulterior motive. And where is Nick tonight?”
She glanced down at my hand and saw there was still no ring on my finger. Nick and I were living in sin for all the world to see, but to my mother that wasn’t making a commitment. Really, to anyone south of Atlanta that wasn’t a commitment. In the South, commitment meant standing up in a church in front of two hundred of your closest friends. Nick and I weren’t there yet.
“He caught a double.”
Vince winced and signaled the waitress to come take our orders. Once she’d left us alone again Vince said, “I heard about it on the way here. It’s a bad one. You might not see him for days.”
“So he tells me,” I shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
There were a lot of wives and girlfriends of cops who couldn’t take the long and erratic hours and the high risk of the job. I’d been raised as if it were normal since my dad’s days on the force, so to me the most irritating thing was that Nick always took the seat facing the door when we ate out, which was where I always wanted to sit. If death was coming through the doors I wanted to face it head on instead of relying on someone else to tell me to duck and cover.
“Max is one of the top defense attorneys in the state,” mom said. “Isn’t that right, Max?”
It was then I realized what she was doing. Mom had kind of adopted Rosemarie—like a stray puppy or one of those children you sponsor from another country. Mom would’ve heard the reports as soon as we’d found the body and notified the police this morning. She had a scanner in her car so she knew the juiciest bits of gossip to pass around at all her hippie classes.
“I’m very good at my job,” he assured her. “I understand you ladies had an exciting morning.”
Rosemarie was buttering a roll and not paying any attention to Maxwell. I figure she’d written him off as an unacceptable substitute for her burned out motor, and after thinking about what she’d said about her muscle control and snapping sticks in two I was hoping she’d give good old Max a wide berth so as not to put another man in traction.
I nudged her beneath the table and she looked up, a startled expression on her face and butter greasing her lips.
“Maxwell is a defense attorney,” I repeated for Rosemarie’s benefit.
“It’s like all the stars have aligned in my favor. Because I’m pretty sure I’m going to need some defending.” And then Rosemarie burst into tears and tore off toward the kitchen, knocking her chair over as she fled.
I heard a couple of bangs and shouts and winced as a stream of inventive swear words floated out the swinging door.
“It’s been a difficult day for her,” I told Maxwell, “but in all honesty she could probably use the help just in case something goes wrong.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Maxwell winced as pots clanged and Rosemarie started swearing back at the cook. “She seems a little unstable.”
“She’s just had a rough month. She broke her tantric master and it set her on the path to destruction.”
“Understandable. I was in traction for almost three months after an unfortunate tantric incident.”
Phoebe perked up at that and scooted her chair a little closer to Maxwell’s. “I had no idea sex could be so dangerous.”
“Oh, good grief, Phoebe. Stop raping the man. He’s here to save Rosemarie.”
“He looks like a capable multitasker.”
“I swear, Phoebe, your father and I did not raise you to talk that way at the dinner table. If you’re going to make your move do it in the back seat of the car like everyone else in this town. If I had a nickel for every child conceived in the back seat of a car in Whiskey Bayou I’d be a rich woman.” She refilled her beer from the pitcher.
“I’ve busted up my fair share,” Vince said. “It sure made my nights on patrol a lot more interesting.”
Mom nodded and had to talk a little louder because World War III was happening in the kitchen. “I’m pretty sure you and Phoebe were both conceived that way. And let me tell you, that was a task. Your father didn’t like to experiment outside the bedroom.”
Everyone in the café had turned their attention from the kitchen to staring at my mother as she let out that little nugget of information.
“Jesus, mom,” Phoebe said.
My smile was tight-lipped. I loved my mother dearly, but sometimes I missed the buttoned-up accountant.
“I love family dinner night,” I said to Maxwell. He hadn’t moved a muscle and I figured for a defense attorney to be taken caught off guard after some of the things he’d heard over his career wasn’t such a shining endorsement for my family. “If you think this is bad, you should see what Thanksgiving is like.”
The thought rightfully horrified him and he sucked down a big gulp of his own beer. I sat back in my seat and decided it was best to focus on Rosemarie and what was going on in the kitchen instead of thinking of my father—who was not a small man—knocking up my mother in the back seat of his squad car.
“You remember Daphne Dreyer,” mom went on. “She was just a few years behind you in school, though Lord knows she never amounted to a plugged nickel. Her mama was always beside herself wondering what to do with that girl. Just last week Daphne got caught down off Route 1 at the edge of the bayou in the backseat of an old Camaro.”
“Ooh,” Phoebe said, shaking her head. “Amateur move. The new ones don’t have near the backseat room as the classics.”
Mom arched a brow at Phoebe and Phoebe grinned sassily.
“Anyway, it turns out Daphne’s foot kept pressing against the horn on the steering wheel and one of the deputies was riding by with his window down when he heard it. By the time he got there he said that car was rocking so hard he was surprised the tires still had air in them. And there was Daphne an
d little Duane Johnson going at it like rabbits, their legs hanging out of the open window and him wearing nothing but his socks.”
“The socks are the most awkward part of sex,” I piped in. “There’s no sexy way to take off your socks. You either leave them on or you both have to stop and get out of the moment to peel them off.”
“It’s because they cover the feet,” Phoebe said. “Feet aren’t sexy to most people. But I bet if Nick had a foot fetish taking off your socks would be the best foreplay of your life. Socks are like a bra for the foot to a foot fetishist.”
“I never thought about it that way.”
“I always tackle the difficult discussion topics,” Phoebe said wisely.
Vince had been part of the family long enough to know to keep his focus on the burger he was putting into his mouth and not look up.
“My point was,” mom said, veering the conversation back in her direction, “that Daphne is twenty-seven years old and Duane is nineteen.”
“Good for her,” Phoebe murmured under her breath.
“And there she is, old enough to know better, but getting caught bare-ass naked in the back of a Camaro with a boy that doesn’t have the sense that God gave a turnip, because now Daphne is pregnant. And who is going to take care of that baby? It’s not going to be Daphne, bless her heart. She works better on her back than on her feet. And it’s not going to be Duane either. He still hasn’t graduated from high school. Which leaves her poor mama the one left holding the responsibility.”
“It’s a damned shame,” Vince piped in. “But in my experience the one thing dumb people are good at is breeding. It turns out sex is something everybody can do.”
“And praise Jesus for that,” Phoebe said. “Because how boring would life be otherwise.”
Another crash came from the kitchen and a whoosh that had the hair standing up on the back of my neck.
“I think I need to go check on Rosemarie. Things don’t sound so good.”
“Damn, I was just about to volunteer to do that,” Phoebe said.
“You snooze, you lose.” I pushed back my chair and headed toward the chaos. Just as I pushed open the swinging door Rosemarie came barreling toward me, followed by a cloud of black smoke that burned my eyes and lungs.
“Look at my kitchen!” A short, bony thin man dressed in torn jeans and stained white t-shirt cleared from the smoke. He had a meat cleaver in his hand and I remembered what Byron said about how much damage to the human body a cleaver could do.
“What the hell?” I yelled as Rosemarie knocked me to the ground in her attempt to escape. The swinging door smacked me in the side of the head, and I got to my hands and knees and managed to stick my hand out before it smacked me a second time.
“Come on woman,” Rosemarie yelled back at me. “This is no time to dillydally. The whole place is going to burn to the ground.”
With that announcement, everyone seated in the restaurant hauled ass and pushed and shoved their way out the front door. Rosemarie hadn’t been kidding. The kitchen was in a shambles and flames whooshed up from the grill almost to the ceiling.
Someone picked me up from under my armpits and I looked back a little dazed. The door had whacked me pretty good and I was seeing stars. Or maybe it was just the smoke. Vince’s face cleared in my vision.
“It’s probably a good time to leave. If I wanted a burned hamburger I’d have stayed home and let your mother cook.”
I burst out into laughter and let him help me outside. I could see why he and my mom got along well together. It took a good sense of the absurd to love a Holmes girl.
Chapter Six
Tuesday
There are two kinds of people in the world—those who can function in the mornings and those who can’t. I fell into the first category, and I’ve been told on more than one occasion that it’s an annoying trait to possess.
Nick fell into the second category. Though there was one part of his body that woke up alert and ready to go every morning. It was currently poking me in the back and didn’t seem to have any intention of going back to sleep.
“What time did you get home?” I asked. It was just shy of six in the morning, and though I woke early and alert, I also slept like the dead and hadn’t felt him get into bed.
“About half an hour ago.” He snuggled in closer behind me and his hand cupped my breast.
“Long enough to recharge it feels like.”
He laughed, low and raspy, and kissed the side of my neck. Nick was really good at a lot of things. But he was exceptional at sex. Like All-American exceptional. If sex was a sport he would’ve lettered many times over. He was so good at sex that he gave me the illusion that I was pretty good at it too. And that took an amazing amount of skill. Because once I orgasmed I was pretty much the man in the relationship and wanted nothing more than to roll over and go to sleep. Unfortunately, Nick usually had at least another half hour of stamina at that point and he oftentimes required me to be conscious for it.
“Recharged doesn’t even begin to describe it. And I figure I owe you one for missing dinner last night.”
He rolled me to my back and parted my legs with his knee, sliding smoothly between them. My pulse was beating about a hundred miles a minute and things were starting to tingle in all the right places.
“I’m thinking you owe me two or three for missing dinner. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the smoke out of my hair.”
“I hate to tell you this, babe, but you didn’t. Though now that you mention it I’m getting hungry for a hamburger.”
He sniffed at my hair and then bit my neck hard. I huffed out a breath and pushed against his shoulder, but he chose that moment to slide deep inside of me and my eyes rolled to the back of my head. Twenty minutes later I was just about to see God when Nick froze.
“Don’t stop! Are you crazy?” My nails dug into his back and I used my yoga-trained muscles to wrap my legs higher and tighter around his waist. I could tell by the hitch in his breath that he was as close as I was, but still something had made him stop.
“I swear to God, Nick, I’m about this close to doing violence if you leave me hanging here.”
“I heard a noise downstairs.”
“I don’t care if it’s the Russian mafia tap dancing on you kitchen counters. I’m about to come.” I squeezed my vaginal muscles tight and he groaned with pleasure. “And so are you.”
“Race you to the finish line.”
He’d just started to move again when I heard the noise this time, and I froze beneath him. I could’ve sworn I heard the blender going. Or maybe a chainsaw. It was hard to tell with the blood rushing in my ears like it was.
“I don’t even care that someone is in my house right now. I’m that close. At least I’ll die happy.”
“It’s just Rosemarie. She spent the night in the guest room. Ohmigod! Right there. Do that again.”
Nick froze again and I screamed out in frustration, grabbing one of the pillows and smacking myself in the face with it to muffle the sound.
“Rosemarie is in the guest bedroom?”
“Can we not talk about this in another thirty-five seconds? Preferably after we’ve both come? For cripes sake.”
“Addison—”
“Fine. Your negotiating skills are top notch. I’ll make it twenty seconds.”
I threw my weight sideways so we rolled and reversed positions and I was on top. I wasn’t even going to make it twenty seconds, and by Nick’s swiftly indrawn breath I was guessing he wouldn’t either.
“Twenty seconds,” he said between clenched teeth. “Better get to work.” His fingers dug into my hips and I started to move. I loved a challenge.
I’m not sure how we ended up on the floor. Apparently a lot can happen in twenty seconds. The sheets were tangled in our legs and there was a broken lamp a few feet away. It didn’t matter. I was paralyzed from the neck down. Like I said, Nick was excellent at sex.
“A murder suspect is sleeping in my guest bedroom?” he
asked once his heart rate reduced to a normal speed.
I tried lifting my head to look at him, but I didn’t have the strength so I dropped it back down to his shoulder. “Don’t be such a hardass. It’s just Rosemarie. You know her. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Baby, her prints were all over the murder weapon we found at the scene. They’re going to arrest her today.”
“Ohmigod.” My head jerked up at that and I caught Nick in the chin. I rubbed at the top of my head while he rubbed at his chin and said, “That’s impossible. There’s no way she killed that woman using that kind of violence. I took her to the range once and we drew faces on watermelons before we shot at them. She dry heaved for five minutes after I blew away the first one.”
“You shot watermelons at the range? I can’t believe they let you do that. They’re usually pretty strict.”
“Only at the civilian range. Bunch of pansies. I shoot at the cop range.”
“Civilians can’t shoot at the cop range without an escort. Who takes you?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t need an escort. Denny Brice and my dad were best friends. His wife threw my wedding shower.” Denny was retired from PD now, but he worked at the range to supplement his pension.
Nick quirked a brow and shifted beneath me. “Did you get to keep all the gifts even though you didn’t get married?”
“Nope. Had to return each and every one, along with a note. Except for the Kitchen Aid mixer Greg’s mother gave me. I kept that. Figured she owed me one for birthing a son that was such an asshole.”
Nick’s chest vibrated with laughter and he pulled me in closer. “If it makes you feel better I agree with you about Rosemarie. She doesn’t have what it takes, and things at the crime scene don’t add up. She’s married to a man name Lance Mayhew and he’s set to make millions from her death. His alibi isn’t ironclad, but it’s backed by their two children. Apparently they were all home together, but in their separate rooms.
“So he could’ve left and killed her and they wouldn’t have known.”
