He sucked in an astonished breath as frigid water pummeled him. Every nerve in his body shrieked, This sucks! Stop this now!
Swearing with a vehemence and creativity he hadn’t known he possessed, he grabbed the faucet and cranked heat into the water until his heart slowed down and he could breathe normally again. “Guess I showed you,” he muttered, glaring down at the meekly flaccid organ that had goaded him into his first—and last—cold shower.
No, that was wrong, he thought as he soaped up. It was Zara who’d driven him beneath the icy spray, Zara herself. It didn’t matter what she wore or didn’t wear. It didn’t matter that she’d tried to dupe him with that loony twin story, or almost got him killed, or drank herself into a stupor that cost him what had promised to be a night to remember.
The fact was, something sparked between them that he’d never felt, not to this extent anyway, with anyone else, and that spark had ignited in record time. Twenty-four hours ago, he hadn’t even met her in the flesh. Now here he was, wishing she’d up and move to Arkansas so he could see whether that spark had a chance to turn into a flame.
Right. Hotshot literary agents didn’t live in log houses just outside of Backscratch, Arkansas. He’d known that all along; it was a given. And grumpy surgeons turned hack writers who upchucked at the sight of spit on a sidewalk did not move to New York City, no way José. It wasn’t gonna happen. It didn’t even have a chance. He’d best quit ruminating on it; there just wasn’t any point.
Gage located the little bottle of hotel shampoo, which Zara had half emptied, and lathered up his hair.
He’d hated having to make that I’m-leaving-the-day-after-tomorrow speech, but he would have felt like a heel if he hadn’t set the record straight on that particular score before things got to the sweaty and breathless stage. Of course, the joke was on him; once things got to that stage, they’d kind of stalled out.
Serves me right for even coming to this town, he thought as he rinsed off. Things never go right here. Come 5:20 tomorrow afternoon, I’m getting on that plane, and this time nothing will ever sucker me back. Nothing.
HOW ARE YOU FEELING?” Gage asked as he polished off the steak and eggs he’d ordered in the posh hotel dining room.
Disgraced, debased and degraded. “A little better,” Emma mumbled into her coffee cup as she tried to avoid looking at the butter-slathered English muffin on her plate. I will never live down my humiliation. It will haunt my dreams until the end of time.
“Did you sleep okay at least?” he asked.
“I slept like a stone.” And woke up in my underwear.
“That’s good.” He motioned to the waitress for their check. “I was worried, you know, because of, well.”
“Because of how much I drank.”
He nodded.
“Look, I’m really embarrassed about that.”
“No need to be embarrassed.”
No need to be embarrassed about getting drunk and... doing what she’d done with him? “That’s never happened to me before.” None of it. “I never, um, lost control like that.”
A knowing flicker in his eyes told her he knew she was talking about more than drinking too much and passing out. “Losing control once in a while is a healthy thing. Everyone should let loose periodically. It’s like releasing a little steam from the valve.”
“Yeah, well, I think I may have blown a gasket last night.”
“I liked it.” He smiled. “A lot. I mean, the part before you became comatose.”
That was reassuring, but since she had no desire whatsoever to explore in conversation with Gage Foster the subject of last night’s frolics on the chaise longue, Emma changed the subject. “I’m going home now—to my house in Queens. Thank you for breakfast. Thank you for... everything. For saving my life.”
“You already thanked me for that.” He clicked the pen the waitress handed him and signed for their meal.
“It’s the kind of thing you’re allowed to thank someone for more than once,” she insisted. “It’s a pretty big deal, when someone jumps in front of a train to save you. I just wanted you to know that I think you’re...”
He looked up, his gaze riveted on her. The waitress reached for the slip and the pen; he handed them over without looking away from Emma.
You’re funny and passionate and smart and sexy, and I’m crazy about you. “You’re a good man,” Emma said quietly. “There aren’t too many of them around. I haven’t met too many, anyway.”
“Thanks.” He still hadn’t stopped looking at her with those hypnotically blue eyes of his.
“I’ve got to go,” she managed to say, rising from the table and plucking the gold raincoat off the back of her chair. She glanced around for her bag before remembering that it was gone and she’d probably never see it or its contents again. Well, she’d managed to get along without it for what—a good sixteen, seventeen hours already. As cold-turkey withdrawals went, this really wasn’t so bad. She missed her bra and panties a little bit more, but in a way it was kind of... exciting, not having them on. The silk lining of her suit felt heavy and slick and sexy against her bare flesh. She felt daring, in a way, and it felt good.
Gage stood when she did, looking decidedly pensive.
She stuck out her hand as he came around the table toward her; he automatically took it. “Goodbye,” she said. “I wish...”
“What?” He whispered it, his hand tightening around hers.
She bit her lip. He gripped her hand harder.
“I wish we could have gotten to know each other better.” Trust her to finally feel this way about someone—under these impossible circumstances.
“Me, too.” He didn’t let up on her hand; there was something almost desperate in his eyes, as if it panicked him to think of her turning and walking away. “It’s funny. Usually I don’t... I mean, you’re not the type of woman I would usually... want to get to know better. Not that I generally run into women like you. We don’t grow that many down where I come from. The thing is, and don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t really expect to like you. Much less...”
Emma felt her heart quicken.
“Zara...”
Zara. Right. “Goodbye, Gage.” Forcibly pulling her hand from his grip, she turned and wove her way through the dining room, crossed the lavish lobby and stepped out into the bright morning sunshine.
“Are you looking for a cab, miss?” asked the doorman, a red-headed Irishman in a gold-trimmed blue uniform.
“Uh...” She didn’t even have a buck to tip this guy, much less money for a cab.
“Zara!”
Turning, she saw Gage jogging through the front door of the Plaza. “How you gonna get into your house? Your keys were in your bag, right?”
“I hid a spare set outside under a rock.”
“You realize every burglar in the world knows that trick.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I just… I figured I’d come up with a better place when I wasn’t so preoccupied with unpacking.”
“So, how do you plan to get to Queens?” he asked. “You don’t have any money.”
Or a phone, which she could have used to call an Uber. “I’d like to say I have a plan, but I don’t.”
He nodded resolutely. “I’ll take you.” Turning to Liam, he said, “Can we get a cab?” The doorman raised a white-gloved hand and a taxi materialized in front of them, as if by transporter beam. He lowered the hand, palm up, for the proffered tip.
Gage guided Emma into the back seat and slid in after her. “We’re going to Flushing, Queens,” he told the cabbie.
“Address?” he asked.
Emma stammered out her address, and the cab screeched away from the curb. She turned to Gage. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Sweetheart, there’s not much in life a body has to do. There’s plenty a body ought to do, if he wants to hold his head up. I can’t just let you go home alone. You don’t know what you’re gonna find there. That guy could be there.”
; She shook her head. “If he was gonna rip me off, he would have done it and left by now.”
“You sound pretty sure of yourself.”
“He wouldn’t stick around,” she insisted. “It doesn’t fit the psychological profile. Burglars like to do their work at night, as quickly and quietly as possible, and then get out of there. It’s too risky to wait around.”
“Yeah, but this isn’t just any garden-variety burglar,” he noted. “This guy pushed you in front of a moving train, so we know he’s capable of murder. For no good reason.”
“It’s true,” she conceded, “that capricious acts of violence don’t fit neatly into the burglar profile, but if we factor in the likelihood of narcotics abuse, and merge the erratic brutality of the hard-core drug addict with the stealth of the—”
“Whoa. Where’d you learn all this criminal-psychology stuff?”
“From books. I like to read about police work and private investigation.”
“Research for that cozy mystery of yours?”
“If I ever write it.”
“You will.” He took her hand, and she let him hold it all the way to Flushing.
OH, GOD.” Emma swayed in the open front door of her house—which she’d found unlocked—actually dizzy from the shock of what had been done to her living room. The raincoat, which she had been carrying, slid off her arm, the ray gun within clattering onto the concrete stoop.
“Don’t faint on me, sweetheart.” Gage banded his arms around her and drew her close. Slumping against him, she shut her eyes and concentrated on the soothing drawl rumbling from his chest. “You can handle this. You can. You’re strong. Say it.”
“I’m strong,” she groaned halfheartedly.
“I’m tough,” he prompted. “I’m the famous, invincible Zara Sutcliffe. Go ahead.”
“I’m... gonna have to sit down.”
Gage led her on rickety legs to her frayed old ottoman, which, like most of the rest of her furniture, had been overturned. Supporting her with one hand, he grabbed the upholstered stool by one of its scarred wooden legs and righted it.
“You shouldn’t touch that,” she said as he gently lowered her into a sitting position on the ottoman. She kept her knees together, mindful of her lack of underwear beneath her skirt. “We shouldn’t touch anything. Fingerprints.”
“I don’t mean to touch anything else,” he said as he scanned the chaos of her ransacked home. Emma followed his gaze as it lit on the shabby wallpaper, torn window shade and threadbare carpet. He peered down the corridor through the back door at the eyesore of an aboveground pool that took up most of the rear yard. She knew what he was thinking: high-and-mighty Zara Sutcliffe lives here?
“Did you just move in?” he asked, with a nod toward the cardboard cartons—Mysteries, H-P; Mysteries, Q-T—resting at odd angles all over the small room, their contents—worn paperbacks, mostly—strewn in disorderly heaps.
“Yeah,” she said distractedly as she took in the random debris that had once comprised her carefully ordered and meticulously cataloged world. Bookcases lay facedown; her favorite one, which she’d just finished staining, was smashed. Her sewing box, two cartons of craft supplies and a carton of CraftWorld back issues had been, from all appearances, kicked open, their contents dumped unceremoniously among the scattered books.
“I better poke around a little, make sure whoever did this is gone.” Handing her his cell phone, he said, “You should probably call 911 and report this.”
He disappeared through the door to one of the two bedrooms, the one she was going to make into an office. “It’s a disaster in here, but your printer’s still on the desk,” he called out.
“Really? Great!” That was a couple hundred dollars saved. Emma decided 911 could wait until she’d checked her landline’s voicemail. She dialed her home number and heard the phone ringing beneath a mound of needlepoint canvas. There was no voicemail. MacGowan Byrne hadn’t gotten back to her yet.
Next, she tried Zara’s number, but it went straight to her mother’s little shriek-fest from The Slithering. She left a message for her sister to call her back as soon as possible, but who knew when that would be, given the spotty cell reception where she was.
“He left the laptop, too,” Gage yelled.
“Yes!” A thousand bucks, minimum, and she’d have had to replace it; it was what she wrote on.
“Guess he doesn’t like office equipment.”
“Should be easy enough to fence. Oh! Check my bedroom. I have some jewelry in a box in the bottom dresser drawer. Good stuff, all real. I’m sure he’ll have taken that.”
Gage left the office and walked into the bedroom. “Yikes.”
“What?”
“He really tore things up in here.”
Emma didn’t want to see it, not yet anyway. She called 911 and told them she wanted to report a burglary. The dispatcher connected her to someone else who connected her to a weary-sounding detective named Molloy, who took her name and address and asked for details. Emma related the encounter in the subway, and how she’d come home this morning to find the house trashed.
“Would you describe the missing items?” Molloy asked, to the muted clattering of a keyboard.
“Um...”
Gage came out from the bedroom with her jewelry box, whispering, “I found it on the floor—open.” He tilted it to display its interior, and arched his eyebrows, as if to say, What do you think of this?
It was full. All the jewelry was there, every last bauble and bangle.
“Ma’am?” Molloy yawned. “The missing items?”
“Is there anything else I should be checking?” Gage whispered.
Emma shook her head, completely perplexed. That jewelry was portable, easily sold and worth thousands; she didn’t own anything more valuable. The intruder had found it, opened it and left it Why?
“Ma’am?”
“Yes, um... I’m sorry. I don’t seem to be missing anything. In fact he left a whole boxful of good jewelry sitting on the floor of my bedroom.”
There was a pause. “Nothing was taken?”
“Apparently not.”
The detective’s answering sigh was long and eloquent. “So all we’re talking about here is some vandalism.”
“Well...” Emma looked around at the catastrophe that used to be her living room. “Quite a lot of vandalism.”
She met Gage’s gaze; he grimaced and closed the jewelry box, clearly discerning, as she did, that significant help would not be forthcoming from New York’s finest.
“Do you have any enemies?” Molloy asked.
So police detectives actually asked that. Emma would have to remember that for her whodunit. “None,” she answered. “Anyway, I just moved here. I don’t know anybody. I’m sure it was the guy from the subway, the one who snatched my bag and pushed me onto the tracks. He could have gotten my address from my driver’s license.”
“Yeah, but see,” Molloy said tiredly, “it don’t make sense that a crazed junkie would bother coming all the way from Manhattan to Flushing just to toss your furniture around. He’d have taken the jewelry and anything else he could carry away. It was probably just a local teenager getting his kicks. If it happens again—”
“Again?” Emma clenched the phone so hard her hand hurt. “Can’t you try and catch the guy—”
“Honestly? It’d be a waste of time. Like I said, if it happens again, give us another call. Have a nice day, Ms. Sutcliffe.” He hung up.
Bolting to her feet with impotent frustration, Emma hauled back to pitch the phone across the room, only have it plucked from her hand by its owner.
“Oh,” she said sheepishly. “Sorry. I… I don’t know what I was—”
“Here,” he said, hefting a bronze bookend off the floor and handing it to her. “Throw this instead. Only aim for the wall. Windows are harder to fix.”
Emma heaved that puppy as hard as she could. It arced across the room and bounced harmlessly off the sofa, landing on a blanket
of strewn magazines.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“No.”
“Never did work for me, either,” he said with a grin.
“Then why did you tell me to do it?”
“’Cause you were achin’ to try it.” His smile faded. “You ready to tour the war zone?”
“I’ll never be ready, but I’ve got to check it out eventually.” The intruder—she was still convinced it was the guy from the subway—had had a field day. In the kitchen, he’d taken stacks of dishes out of the cabinets and dumped them on the floor, cracking many of them. All the sheets and towels had been yanked out of the linen closet, unfolded and left in a mountain in the hallway. Her bedroom was the worst, though. He’d wrenched her mattress right off the bedsprings and shaken out the contents of every dresser drawer. She waded through the riot of tangled clothing, picking a few utilitarian items—jeans, a T-shirt, a sweatshirt, some sneakers—and stuffing them into a small tote bag. She longed to get into her own clothes, but she balked at the idea of spending any more time here than absolutely necessary; she’d change later.
When she emerged from the bedroom, she found Gage standing by the window in the living room with her open jewelry box, sorting idly through its contents. He twirled an ornate Victorian-era gold bracelet adorned with a sprinkling of diamonds and watched the sun spark off it. “Nice. Do you ever wear it?”
“I never wear any of it.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged, then rubbed her arms, suddenly chilly. “My father gave it to me. But it belonged to my grandmother, and I liked her, so I don’t want to sell it.”
Gage watched her closely, his expression sobering. He replaced the bracelet in the box and closed it. Quietly he asked, “How bad was it?”
Emma drew in an unsteady breath. “He didn’t beat me. Never laid a hand on me. So I guess I got off easy, huh?”
“There are lots of ways to ruin a kid’s childhood. Which one did your father pick?”
“Can we not talk about this?” He’d breached enough of her defenses already; the subject of her and Zara’s upbringing at John Sutcliffe’s hands was still, after all these years and her father’s death, an open emotional wound.
Good to Be Bad (Double Dare Book 1) Page 11
