Honeytrap

by Crystal Green

  The glint in his eyes told me that he wasn’t exactly talking about being conscientious when it came to taking care of a girl’s heart. He was telling me he was always prepared, like an oversexed Boy Scout with a backpack of condoms.

  What should I say to that?

  Turned out, I didn’t have to respond at all because the little boy was grabbing for Micah’s ponytail. Micah intercepted his hand and bumped fists with him instead. The kid was overjoyed at the new game.

  “This is Henry,” Micah said. “Darwin’s boy.”

  My heart fully started up again. “Darwin has a baby?”

  “It’s a recent development. Baby Mama came here a couple weeks ago with her sister, bringing this teeny surprise with her, too.” Micah pressed Henry to his chest and covered his other ear with his free hand. “Dar had no idea about Henry since his mom, Lucille, was just passing through town more than a year and a half ago, if you know what I mean.”

  “Evidently, she didn’t pass through fast enough.” But I had to say that Henry was as cute as a button. I wouldn’t consider him a mistake, just as Mom hadn’t considered me to be one.

  “Darwin has already cottoned to Henry.” Micah uncovered the toddler’s ear. “He quit smoking and everything, but his only objection is the name. The kid’s going to be a librarian with ‘Henry’ stuck to him.”

  “I’m surprised the entire town isn’t buzzing with this news.”

  “Oh, it’s starting. You’ve just been downwind of all the gossip.”

  I turned off the engine, even though I didn’t make a move to get out of the pickup. Micah seemed to think this was encouraging, even though I’d only shut down because I didn’t like the thought of a baby breathing in truck fumes.

  “See, Hank?” he said to the boy. “She’s gonna drink lemonade with us. Score one for you, little man, you’re already a charmer.”

  Henry clapped and, yes, I was utterly charmed. What ex-babysitter wouldn’t be? I got out and made sure Micah knew that I wasn’t here for his company as much as to be a girly girl and fuss over Henry, then grab that manual and go.

  As Micah handed over the child, Henry came to me with slobbery glee, reaching for my ponytail again, his eyes wide and blue just like his daddy’s. This time, he succeeded with my ponytail.

  I bounced him up and down. When Henry laughed, I laughed, and we followed Micah to the rear sidewalk, going toward the bush-lined back patio with its view of a fenced pasture. I didn’t see or smell any livestock nearby, so I was betting the Wyatts didn’t keep any.

  When we entered the house through the sliding glass door, I got another surprise because, like the outside, everything was cozy and neat. The family room was decorated with clean yet faded plaid furniture, a widescreen TV, and polished oak end tables. The kitchen had a peekaboo window where something that smelled like chili was cooking on the stove, although no one was around to mind the food. The only mess I could see was a couple of laptops lying on the counter that separated us from the kitchen, one of the motherboards exposed.

  I didn’t know what I’d expected from the place where Micah and the twins lived. A total dump with trash ankle-deep on the floor? A bachelor pad with discarded bras draped over lamps?

  Micah was watching me, and I tried not to advertise my keen interest as I wandered around with Henry on my hip.

  “I’m in charge of keeping things in order,” Micah said. “The better I clean, the more money I get off the rent.”

  Mom had a similar arrangement with her guests—clean or be gone. “The twins own this house?”

  “Yup. They don’t do too bad with their shop.”

  As Henry touched my face, mapping it with his fingers, I gestured toward the computers. “Is this another side job of yours, besides playing maidservant?”

  He was amused by that last term. “Those computers are Deacon’s. If life had been different, he might’ve started up one of those geek businesses that are making millions on the West Coast, but he just likes to tool around here in the boonies instead. Maybe he can fix that laptop of yours that died up at college.”

  The one I’d been using for Lana Peyton. I did still have the machine, not knowing what else to do with it. “If he wants to take a crack at it, I’m game. Thanks.”

  A woman appeared from the hallway, standing at the kitchen stove, picking up the lid and sniffing the contents. Micah and I got quiet, but Henry leaned over and reached out his hands for her, making a sound that resembled, “Meh-mah!”

  She wasn’t much older than I was—maybe in her early twenties. I could tell she’d already lived a long life, though—her brown hair was fixed in a bunch of big curlers, her gaze was red-rimmed and burned out. But she had a beautiful smile for Henry, even if a front tooth was chipped.

  “My man!” she said, coming around the counter and taking Henry from me. She kissed his cheek about ten times as he gurgled. When she was done, she said, “Are you having fun with new friends?”

  She was clearly dying to know who Micah had brought home.

  I stuck out my hand. “I’m Shelby.”

  As she shook with me—very firmly—she gave me a longer gaze, making a semi-impressed face, then giving Micah a flagrantly questioning look.

  “I’ve got a truck manual she needs,” Micah said. “She’s not really here.”

  “She’s not?”

  “You never saw her.”

  The woman seemed to know that this meant I wasn’t to be talked about to anyone. Fine with me since I shouldn’t have been here at all.

  Micah said, “Shelby, this is Lucille.”

  We shook hands until Lucille suddenly made a beeline for the stove with Henry in tow. “Glad to meet you, Shelby. Micah doesn’t bring many . . . friends . . . home.”

  “Not a friend,” Micah repeated. “She’s absent, remember?”

  This could be fun. “Who does he bring home, Lucille?”

  Micah cursed under his breath as Darwin’s baby mama took off the chili lid and set it down, turned Henry away from the pot, and stirred as steam floated out.

  Lucille answered me. “From what I’ve heard, he brings home the same kind of girls Deacon and Darwin used to bring before I arrived—”

  Micah interrupted. “Lucille used to compete in rodeo barrel racing until she took that fateful trip through Aidan Falls and ended up with Henry. I think she’s forgetting she was one of those girls at a point.”

  Was there bad blood between them? I didn’t think so, because Lucille gave Micah the kind of look an older sibling would give a younger brother.

  He continued. “Her sister Natalie came with her, so Darwin got double the trouble.”

  Something tweaked me, and I hated to think it might be jealousy at a woman living in this house. With Micah.

  Lucille dipped a wooden spoon in the pot and smelled it, closing her eyes as Henry watched, enthralled. She opened her eyes, tasted the chili, and smacked her lips. “I would get Natalie out here to meet you, Shelby, but she’s at the public pool for the day. She just got a new used bike so she’s been riding everywhere. Lord help us when she gets her license in a few years.”

  Hah! Her little sister was massively illegal. Even she had to be off-limits for a man-whore like Micah.

  I realized something else—when Micah had mentioned that the twins had some guests over last night, he hadn’t been talking about cheap dates pulled from the nearest bar. Instead, Darwin had an instant family . . . or at least the wobbly start of one.

  Micah smiled at Henry as the boy stared at him now. “Natalie’s biking to a slumber party after the pool, leaving me to babysit this little critter. That girl makes friends fast.”

  Henry giggled, and Micah’s smile widened. I was sure he wasn’t even trying to impress me with his natural ability to get along with toddlers, either. He wasn’t trying to score points. He and Henry just . . . were.
<
br />   A cynical voice whispered to me. What if he’s showing you his softer side to bring you into that web of his?

  “Mike,” Lucille said, “are you going back to the shop today?”

  “No, I took off early. I was thinking I’d see to a few adjustments on the Camaro before you leave for the potluck, but then Shelby came along, needing a manual.” He looked at me and, for a moment, it seemed like he was keeping some kind of secret. Then his expression went back to normal. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but that Brian Taggart bast . . . er . . . guy has been making noise about a racing rematch with me.”

  Wow, he didn’t even cuss in front of Lucille and the baby. “Are you going to accept?”

  Lucille rattled the lid on the chili pot as she put it back on. “No, he ain’t. And I got on Darwin’s tail about being Micah’s wingman for that last race. Men don’t play that way, do they, Henry? Only babies do.”

  She made a face at Henry, and he laughed.

  Micah seemed to remember that he’d promised me some lemonade, and he went to the cabinet, fetching glasses. “You stick to your Chamber of Commerce activities and I’ll stick to my cars.”

  “That’s fair.” Lucille stroked her son’s hair. “Micah’s kind enough to babysit tonight while I stand by my man at his business function, so I’m not one to be giving him grief.”

  Well, it sounded like Lucille would be whipping more than Darwin into shape if she was fortunate. I couldn’t help liking her.

  She trained her gaze on me. “Will you be helping Micah . . . babysit?”

  “Nooo!” I waved my hands in front of me.

  “Uh-uh.” Micah’s denial joined mine as he walked out of the kitchen with the lemonade, giving me a glass clinking with ice. “As I mentioned, she just stopped in for an errand. Don’t you need to get ready or anything?”

  Lucille took the hint, sending me one more curious glance before nodding at me and taking Henry with her down the hallway, leaving me alone with Micah.

  I sipped from my glass. The only sounds seemed to be the ceiling fans, the tick of a clock near the front entrance of the house, and the burbling of Henry as he chattered with his mom in their room right before Lucille closed the door.

  I narrowed my gaze at Micah, who’d taken up a lethargic stance against the back of the couch.

  “So who do you usually bring home?” I asked, going back to a most interesting subject.

  “I knew you wouldn’t drop this.” He took a long swig of lemonade. “By the time Lucille showed up with Natalie and Hank, I wasn’t bringing anyone home.”

  “But before that? You’ve been living in Aidan Falls since the beginning of the year, so you had plenty of time to introduce girls to your room.”

  “All right. There were . . . girls.”

  I waited, a slight smile on my mouth. It felt a little forced.

  He shrugged. “The twins and I weren’t monks.”

  “But now, with a young and impressionable little sister and a baby around, you might as well be.”

  “Maybe Darwin’s gone responsible, but Deacon and I just learned to change our MO, not our lifestyles.”

  “So now you ambush girls’ bedrooms and make good use of movie theaters. Understood.”

  With another shrug, he meandered out of the family room and headed for the hall. I supposed that was my cue to get that manual he’d wanted to give me, so I trailed him past the closed door of what I assumed was Darwin and Lucille’s room and down to the very end.

  Micah’s room was well kept, too, the bed covered with a thin, striped white-and-blue blanket. His desk was stacked with used, page-curled car and equipment manuals, as if he studied them over and over. The shelves were the only grimy section, holding grease-worked items that looked as if they belonged in a car’s engine. Far be it from me to identify exactly what they were, though.

  I went over to the shelves to get a closer look, and he spoke from behind me, sending invisible fingers down my spine.

  “What is it that they call a fair trade?” he asked. “Quid pro quo or something?”

  “Very good. Are you hinting that, since you saw my room, it’s your turn to show off yours?”

  “Let’s just say I’m giving you five minutes until I kick you out.”

  I caught his smirk, then returned it, facing his shelves again and setting my lemonade down on a nearby table. “If I were a detective, I’d detect that you liked cars.”

  “Good start.”

  I touched a metal springy-looking device. “Spark plug?” I asked.

  “You got it.”

  “That’s about all I know.” With him behind me, I was getting rattled, and I realized that I was pulling down on the hem of my shirt, fretting. I let go of the material. “I told you that I need to take an auto class. I love my truck, and I’d like to take better care of her.”

  “‘Her,’ huh? Since you’re personalizing your truck, does she have a name?”

  I arched my eyebrow at him. “I call her ‘my truck.’”

  He assumed his usual cool-guy position, leaning back against the wall by his bed, his hands tucked under his armpits. “Well, how about that.”

  “What?”

  “Most girls I know have a nickname for their rides. Males, too, sometimes. Hell, the twins even call my Camaro—”

  “Hugger,” I said, remembering what one of the boys had told me at the drag race. “Because of the kind of paint you used.”

  “She has a steel-trap mind. That’s dangerous.”

  Right. I was the lethal one.

  I moved over to his desk, and I thought I felt him tense up.

  “Here,” he said, “let me . . .”

  His voice ground to a halt as I moved one of the manuals aside, finding a few faded pictures of a young boy—not more than ten years old—and a woman who looked just like him, with her dark blond hair and gray-green eyes. They were at a park, holding onto each other and smiling as if they were each other’s entire worlds.

  “I forgot to clean up,” he said, right behind me. His voice was so collected that the only thing giving away his agitation was how he shoved the top picture into a manual next to it and pushed the book to the back of his desk.

  After that, he didn’t move, and his presence sent whispering bumps over my skin. He smelled like grease from the shop, musk, and that scent I could never identify. Actually, I recognized a trace of the spice in here, as if he’d tried to scrub it away recently.

  Some kind of tobacco that he’d refused to smoke, now that Henry was living with them?

  When I saw a pack of cigarillos tucked between a couple more manuals, I had my answer.

  He saw where I was looking and grabbed the pack, tossing it into the trashcan nearby. “Darwin stopped smoking, and I did, too.”

  “For Henry. That was thoughtful.”

  “His lungs are tiny, so why pollute the poor kid?”

  Our conversation dwindled, my gaze still on that manual he’d pushed aside—the one with the pictures.

  I had to ask. “Was that you in the photos?”

  “Years ago.” His voice was banded tight. “I was looking at them the other night and forgot I’d taken them out.”

  “Is that your mom? She’s pretty.”

  He tightened all over now. “Was pretty.” He started to comb through the manuals, busying himself, and when he found the right one, he casually handed it over. Just as carelessly, he piled a couple more on the manual he’d put the photos in, like he was burying a memory. “Her anniversary passed less than a week ago.”

  “Anniversary?”

  I should’ve known by the way he was acting that I wouldn’t hear anything good, and when his jaw clenched, I wished I’d kept my silence.

  “Of her death.”

  Oh, God. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Th
ere’re already too many people who deserve to be sorry for it . . .” He faded midsentence, giving me a hard look that I’d never imagined he could pull off. I’d seen teasing, I’d seen seductive, yet never this.

  But just as quickly as his gaze hardened, it heated up, like coals burning from the inside out, destroying themselves. As he turned away from me, going to his door, I thought he was going to usher me out because I’d stumbled across something I wasn’t supposed to see, and he was ready to go on to the next, easier conquest.

  I’d become a poker chip that might’ve gotten too expensive for him to play.

  But when he closed the door, I realized I was wrong. He didn’t want me out of here—he wanted me in.

  My heart trembled like a trapped thing, my chest rising and falling. The more I tried to control my reactions, the worse it got, and I backed away from him as he came toward me.

  “Once again,” he said in that inviting tone, “there’s too much talk going on.”

  I took another step back, banging into his shelves. Like a clumsy fool, I reached out to steady them. Really, I should’ve been more worried about being caught in his sights, marked.

  Was he trying to make me forget I’d seen his pictures? Had introducing me to Henry to show off his soft side, then showing me his clean, unexpectedly nice house failed as a plan to emotionally suck me in and now he was distracting me? Had I seen too much about him?

  I couldn’t even swallow as he bent slightly, pressing his palms to just above my knees, where the skirt wasn’t covering anything. He started to slide the material up and I panicked, dropping the manual, grabbing his wrists.

  “That’s not why I came in here,” I said.

  “Then was it for this?”

  With that fire still in his gaze—dark and controlled by something that I wasn’t sure had anything to do with me—he crushed his lips to mine.

  I automatically thawed beneath him as he slipped his hands up to my waist then to my arms, raising them above my head. I gripped a shelf, unable to stop myself from responding with this fever that never seemed to go away.