Judy, biologically incapable of being charmed, merely harrumphed and turned back to her computer screen, muttering under her breath about unscheduled visitors.
“That’s very kind of you, pumpkin, but my first day isn’t over yet.”
“Are you sure, cuddlemuffin? Because I’m pretty sure we agreed I’d pick you up at seventeen hundred hours.”
“You’ve got it all wrong, lovedumpling. I told you to come by at six p.m. That would be eighteen hundred, right?”
I was on the point of arguing further when Melanie came swishing down the hall, stopping so hard at the end of it that Kristin ran right into her back. The stack of papers Melanie had been holding spilled from her hands like an avalanche and fluttered to the floor in a flurry of white.
Melanie dropped to her knees, blushing furiously as she hastily raked them into a pile. It was the first time I’d ever seen her flustered . . . and I liked it.
Kristin ducked around her and made a beeline for the door, tossing a hasty, “Good night!” to no one in particular.
Shit. I’d been hoping to catch her. At least long enough to get a closer look at her face and mentally measure the features against Valentine’s.
“Let me help you with that.” Shepard squatted down and gathered the pages that had floated like leaves to his well-worn combat boots.
“That’s mighty kind of you, sir.” Melanie layered on the Scarlett O’Hara drawl thicker than cream cheese icing on a red velvet cake, batting her dark lashes against her cheek.
I was pretty sure if I ever tried that, I’d probably look like I was having some kind of obscure ocular seizure.
Not liking the way Melanie accidentally on purpose brushed Shepard’s hand, I nudged him with my knee and cleared my throat. “Shouldn’t we get going, pookiepants? We’ll be late for your grandmother’s birthday party.”
I could have lived for decades on the heady cocktail of shock and dismay clouding Melanie’s face.
Shepard rose to my side, but not without a dubious glare, which I ignored. If he was going to show up to my place of business pretending to be my boyfriend, then he could damn well carry out the charade.
“Oh, how rude of me. Shepard, this is Melanie Beidermeyer, one of the part-time associates here at the firm. Melanie, this is Shepard. My boyfriend.” I somehow managed to turn it into a ten-syllable word.
“Does he have a last name?” Melanie asked me while not taking her eyes off him.
“Just Shepard,” I said, looping my arm through his. “Like Prince or Adele. He’s just that good.”
Melanie tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. I noted with dismay that it was still as perfectly curled as it had been this morning. “Well, in that case, just Shepard, I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise,” he said.
“Jane, shame on you for keeping such a big secret.” Her gaze flicked to the level of his crotch with the authority of someone reared to evaluate the virility of thoroughbred stallions. Then, standing with her slightly scattered bunch of papers, she reached out and mock pinched my arm. “Where have you been keeping him?”
“In my bed, mostly.” I gave Melanie a lascivious grin and let my free hand wander possessively across Shepard’s pectoral. “He’ll hardly let me leave the apartment. In fact, he just can’t keep his hands off me.” I knew this declaration was somewhat compromised by my reaching out to wrap Shepard’s hand around my waist, but went for it anyway. “Isn’t that right?”
“That’s right, my little wildebeest.” Shepard’s fingers dug painfully into my hip. “In fact, that’s why I came by early. I was hoping we could grab a quickie in the car before the party.”
“Oh, you naughty boy.” I playfully punched his arm, then imagined Shepard’s face as a giant doughnut so I could summon the proper degree of rabid hunger. “Of course.”
At which point I popped up to peck him on the lips.
That had been the plan, anyway.
Foiled chiefly by Shepard’s frighteningly fast reflexes. His hand was on the back of my skull before I could so much as utter a gasp.
Not that gasping would have done me any good, because the only air currently available to me was in Shepard’s lungs. And even then, I wasn’t so much thinking about the man’s lungs as I was his tongue. How hot, how wet it felt sliding across my lips.
It would have been just plain rude not to open my mouth for him, and hadn’t I determined to do something about my lack of manners during my time with Sam today?
I gave him an inch.
He took a mile.
His hand on my jaw, fingers trailing down over my jugular, mouth creating a rhythm deeper parts of me yearned to mimic. After breathless seconds I recognized it.
Shepard was kissing me in time to the throbbing of my own heart.
I wasn’t exactly sure how a wall had materialized at my back, but there it was.
There I was.
Across the room from where we’d started. Dizzy, dazed, jelly legged, and kissed so thoroughly that I knew Shepard had a bridge, two crowns, and a few assorted fillings.
Melanie stared at us gap mouthed.
Twin rectangles of blue light reflected from the computer screen outed Judy, who had risen from her chair enough to see over the reception desk.
And of course, standing at the end of the hallway, his cheeks flushed the color of a stoplight, was Sam Shook. He held my laptop in one hand and the messenger bag I’d left in his office in the other.
I felt like taking a page from his book and repeatedly thumping my head against something harder than my skull.
Like a diamond.
“I . . . I thought I heard you say something about leaving,” Sam said. “I didn’t want you to forget your things.”
It was Shepard who stepped forward to retrieve them since I seemed to have grown roots into the floor. “Thanks, guy.”
Guy.
I wondered if Sam had picked up on the slight pejorative.
“Well,” I said, stooping to gather the bouquet of lilies we’d crushed between us. “I guess we better be going. See you tomorrow, Sam. Good night, Judy.”
Judy made a noise that might have been an acknowledgment or dislodging of excess phlegm.
Shepard steered me out the door and to the elevator, which I was relieved to find occupied by at least a few other business types. The space seemed entirely too small and enclosed after our full-contact tongue wrestling.
We exited into the parking garage, cool beneath the earth.
“So Kristin Flickner is Valentine’s half sister,” I announced as soon as we were closed into his Civic.
“The hell you say?” Shepard depressed the engine button, turned on his police scanner, and pulled a reflective folding cover off the windshield that had nothing to do with keeping out the sun.
“Truth.” For once.
“I thought I told you not to go digging into Kristin Flickner.”
“Here’s where you’ll be proud of me. I didn’t even have to ignore what you told me. I assisted Sam with character witnesses for Valentine’s divorce proceedings today.”
“Sam is it?” Shepard’s brows flatlined as his lips tightened. “I thought the firm didn’t do divorces.”
“They do for Valentine.”
“That fucker gets more personal exceptions than the pope gets in Rome.”
“You mean exceptions like an understanding with the cops that renders him inculpable for manslaughter?”
“That’s different.” He put the car in gear and backed out without looking either in the rearview mirror or backup cam. His judgment of spatial relationships was truly eerie in its accuracy.
I yawned as we pulled out of the garage into the early evening, the skyscrapers around us gilded by the sun’s westward descent. “What’s on the agenda for tonight?”
“P-Ripple, D-Town, and I had an idea, but I don’t know if you’d be willing to participate.”
“I’m up for anything that isn’t going to the safe hou
se.”
“Anything?” The playful suggestion in his voice hinted at possible wild gorilla sex.
“Well, not anything anything.” The lack of playful suggestion in mine belied my desperate need for the same.
“There’s three of us, and three different groups of people following you. The easiest way to flush them out is—”
“To put me out for bait,” I finished for him, having already arrived at this conclusion during yesterday’s endless solitary sequestration.
“I warned them you probably wouldn’t be up for it.”
“Are you trying reverse psychology on me, Shepard?”
“That depends,” he said. “Is it working?”
“Not really. But it just so happens that my impulsive nature suits the purposes of this particular operation.”
“Mission,” he corrected. “Operations are for doctors.”
“Would I get a gun?” Fantasies of being a black-clad badass with an impressive sidearm strapped to my leg might have already begun to gallop way ahead of me.
“No, but you’d get a weapon.”
“I thought I was the one who did the linguistic correcting in this relationship.”
He cleared his throat and swiftly crossed three lanes of traffic without signaling—classic Shepard, as I was learning. “Speaking of the relationship . . .”
My head lolled back onto the headrest. I’d become very, very tired all of a sudden. “Don’t tell me you want to talk about our feelings and shit. It was just a kiss, okay?”
“Alpha, that was just a kiss like Hiroshima was just a bomb, and Bravo, I want to know about the blonde.”
It was inevitable, really. Anything I had, Melanie would get, and apparently this held true even for things I only pretended to have. “We’ve only been a make-believe item for forty-eight hours, and already you’re eye-humping blondes?”
“Negative. I want to know why you started acting like a jealous girlfriend only when she showed up.”
“You were the one who showed up toting flowers. I was just playing along.”
“Please,” he scoffed. “Voluntary cooperation isn’t part of your MO. Who is she to you?”
The one who beat me out of the valedictory chair I killed myself to earn. The one who mocked me for studying when everyone else was celebrating. The one who met with Valentine before and after my mother disappeared. The one who somehow managed to finagle a position shadowing someone my mother had been investigating. The one who delighted in pointing out my every misstep and mistake since I’d met her.
“Just someone I know from school.”
“Do you look at all your schoolmates like you want to eat their spleen on toast?”
“Gluten-free crackers,” I corrected him. “With a good beluga caviar and crème fraîche. It is Melanie Beidermeyer we’re talking about here.”
“Jealousy, huh? I read you. Want me to dial it up next time?”
“Dial it up how?” I raised a hand to my still kiss-swollen lips. “Dry hump me on Melanie’s desk?”
He shrugged. “If it would help the cause.”
“How very generous of you.”
“I’m a very generous guy.”
I indulged in an eye roll and dug around in my laptop bag for the fortifying candy bar I’d been saving. I had a feeling I was about to need it. “So, generous guy. Tell me about this mission.”
My threefold instructions were pretty simple, really.
Stay in contact. Be conspicuous. Don’t do anything stupid.
Directives given to me by Paul Gladstone, D-Town, and Shepard, respectively.
Simple, right?
Hi. I’m Jane.
Have we met?
“I’m cold, and this is stupid.”
“What did I say about talking?” Shepard’s voice buzzed in my ear as it had all evening, a mosquito that had taken up permanent residence snug against my eardrum via a covert Bluetooth earpiece.
“People see you muttering to yourself on street corners, and it’s a hop, skip, and a divorce from a shopping cart full of cats and empty wine bottles. Is that what you want?”
I felt no compelling need to mention that I already had the empty-wine-bottles part covered.
“What I want is something warm to eat, a chair to sit in, and not to have your voice in my head for five goddamn minutes. I’m beginning to have a whole new sympathy for schizophrenics.”
“Get your hand away from your ear.”
Truly I hadn’t even realized that I had started to massage it. Only that I wanted to allay the ache caused by the foreign object, small though it might be.
“How much longer do I have to stand out here?” I shivered against a bone-deep chill, the result of an unseasonably cold spring storm settling over the city. The nearby alleyway was a damp, piss-scented mouth breathing the weekend’s revels onto my neck at odd intervals.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a real lack of patience?”
“And has anyone ever told you that you have a real talent for stating the totally fucking obvious?”
Shepard was silent for a moment. A silence into which I imagined him dumping florid mental curses by the bucketful and slowly counting to ten.
“Listen to me—”
“No, you listen.” I cast an irritated look out into the city at large, having no idea exactly where he might be. “I’ve been standing on this godforsaken downtown street corner for two hours now. I’ve been mistaken for a prostitute three times, and not a single person has made an attempt to kidnap, assault, or otherwise maim me. This is damned disappointing is what it is.”
“Now is when the real work begins, Jane. Use this time—”
“If you start up with one of your lectures, you’re not going to have to worry about someone trying to kidnap me, because I’ll smack my own head against this building until I’m dead.” I patted the corner of the rough brick edifice for emphasis.
“Jane, do not—”
“Okay, GI Joe. I’m going inside to warm up. We’ll talk in a little bit.”
“Negative. Stay in position—”
“Goodbye.” I affected the particular tones of an automated operator right before she disconnects your call after a couple of wrong menu choices. As far as I was concerned, Shepard had done just that. The breeze was cool in my empty ear canal as I pulled the bud from my ear and stashed it in my bra. If nothing else, the beating of my heart could witness to Shepard that I hadn’t snuffed it.
A whoosh of warmth blasted my face as I pushed into the Tilted Tiger, a gastropub specializing in overpriced microbrews and perfectly good food ruined by hipsters. A cheer rose from the bar area, crowded for a Monday night. Likely a result of the hockey game unfolding on one of the many TVs suspended overhead.
I bypassed a hostess wearing a miniskirt and knee socks and took a seat at the bar as far away from the other patrons as possible but still in full view of the big windows. An awfully thoughtful nod to my trio of would-be co-operatives, as they couldn’t set foot in the place without getting burned.
The bartender—Debra, her minichalkboard nametag announced—swiped the area in front of me with a bar mop and set down a recycled cardboard coaster and a small white dish of dusty-looking nuts. “Complimentary spiced raw almonds,” she said when I dubiously eyed the proffered snack. “Our specials tonight are cauliflower kale tacos and vegan kimchi nachos. Can I get you something to drink?”
I glanced at the small menu card of house-special drinks. My eyes glazed over when I got to the words Lavender-Infused Fig Thyme Old-Fashioned.
“You hiding any plain old vodka back there, Debs?” I nodded toward the bottles glowing behind her like a backlit choir. “Preferably something that hasn’t been made from locally sourced potatoes and strained through a hippie’s sock?”
Debra’s mouth looked like a coin pouch someone had just pulled the strings on. “We have the regular brands.”
“Lovely. Dump some regular shit in a shaker for me with ice and three olives, sha
ke it like an ass in a Lil Wayne video, and bring it back here, if you could.”
She took herself off to see to my drink, and I let myself sag on the barstool, elbowing the armpit-scented almonds out of the way.
“Can I buy that for you?”
The feelings arrived in this order: Delight. Recognition. Despair.
“Fuck. Not you again.”
“Is this going to be our standard greeting?” Officer Bixby set his bottle of beer down on the bar and slid onto the stool next to mine. He’d traded his patrol uniform for a polo shirt that showed off his guns to devastating advantage and jeans well worn enough to hint at thighs roughly the size of tree trunks.
“I was sort of hoping we wouldn’t be seeing enough of each other to require a standard greeting,” I said.
He almost managed to look offended. I say almost because his face was beer-rosy and more relaxed than I’d thus far seen it.
“And here I offered to buy you a drink.”
“Poor judgment on your part.”
Debra returned with the shaker and reached for a mason jar on the shelf above the beer taps. I cleared my throat and shook my head no when she glanced back at me. With a disgusted sigh and no small amount of eye rolling, she bent down to the literal bottom shelf to retrieve a regular old lowbrow martini glass. She sloshed the shaker’s contents into it, adding a garnish of three olives skewered on a rosemary sprig instead of the classic plastic cocktail sword. I decided to let this small act of rebellion slide.
I ate an olive from the stick and sipped my drink, grateful for the instant warmth it kindled in my empty belly.
“I’ve been meaning to call you,” Bixby said.
“About?”
“Your mother.”
These two words lodged an icy stone at the base of my throat, the vodka refusing to trickle past it. “And why haven’t you? Called me, that is.”
Bixby scooted his stool closer to mine. “I wasn’t sure you’d be alone.”
I pretended an ease I didn’t feel, stirring my drink with the twig. “Why would I need to be alone for you to call me?”
He consulted his beer’s peeling label like it was the Delphic oracle. “How much do you know about Shepard?”
I didn’t like this question. Not one bit. And in no small part because I didn’t like the answers already forming in my mind.
Private Lies (Jane Avery Mysteries Book 1) Page 14
