Eli shook his head. “No wonder you men are so hot on having your women armed. It sounds like Lusty is a very dangerous place to live.”
“Oh, no, it’s not at all. The population is extremely law abiding and peace loving,” Nancy said.
“It’s the damn out of towners who’re dangerous to life and limb,” Jordan said.
Eli thought the man could very well be right. He had to wonder if Davies or one of his minions would be yet another out-of-towner who would prove to be dangerous to someone in Lusty.
Peter walked up to him. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” he said, nodding toward the quadruple-width alley. “Then I want to know what the hell kind of danger you think my wife’s cousin might be in.”
“Y’all go ahead and talk about my life as if I wasn’t even here. Don’t you worry about me, none. I’ll just stay over here and play with my little ole fully loaded, very lethal weapon.”
Eli saw Jeremiah was having as much trouble as he was controlling his laughter. Peter Alvarez-Kendall proved to be the better man.
“Let me rephrase. I’ll see what Special Agents Barton and Winthrop are made of—and then we’ll go into the lounge, get ourselves some refreshments, and discuss the potentially dicey situation in which we all may find ourselves.”
Eli’s woman made him proud. She snorted, and raised her weapon so that the barrel was pointing to the ceiling. “Good save, slick. Just so long as you know that I’ll be taking your measure, too.”
Jordan was right. It was a good thing that he and Jeremiah both had excellent senses of humor.
Chapter 13
Nancy supposed if all these big macho testosterone makers were taking the concept that she might be in danger seriously, she probably should, too.
Even if she couldn’t find any logic at all in that supposition.
However, total capitulation wasn’t in her nature when it came to logical discussions with the male of the species—the species in this case, specifically, being familia Lusty. “I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time here. Maybe you could enlighten me.” She looked around the table in the lounge at Lusty’s indoor firing range. Weapons had been cleaned and they as well as all the unspent ammunition had been locked away. Shell casings had been collected for recycling. The alleys had been cleaned, ear protection disinfected and put away, and the range returned to the pristine shape it had been in when they’d arrived. Now they sat, nursing sodas and hashing out the situation—which meant the men were trying to explain to Nancy how serious the situation was. “I know that Senator Davies is a scumbag. I know he doesn’t believe most of what he espouses, because nothing reaches his eyes. Not laughter, not conviction, and certainly not compassion.”
Jordan nodded. “Grandma Kate always says that to rightly take a person’s measure you look into their eyes. I’ve discovered that she’s right about that.”
“Exactly! So while I might agree with you that he is a detestable man—and quite possibly an evil one—why, in the name of all that’s holy, would he want to ‘come after’ me? I’ve never even spoken to the man. And what makes you think that’s exactly what he’s planning on doing in the first place?”
Jeremiah sat forward. He looked at Eli, and then Peter. Then he faced her. “You’re looking for a logical equation when possibly, none exists. I think you hit it—the man is evil. He’s only interested in himself, his career, and his own advancement. Some men are like that, and couple that personality with evil and a fine, manipulative mind, and you have men who operate on purely logical lines.” He sat back. “I once saw the man at a campaign rally before he was elected to the Senate. It was when I was visiting a friend, and that friend wanted to attend the event to see what this ‘newcomer’ was all about. And when I left that rally, I had come to one conclusion.” He looked around the table. “The man had charisma, and could whip up a crowd like nobody’s business. But there was something else about him, as if he was balancing himself on the precipice of sanity.”
“So you think he’s nuts. Okay, what’s one more strike against the scumbag? But still, even in his twisted-slash-insane kind of logic there has to be a reason why he’d be after me.”
“Sweetheart, he may not be after you. He may be targeting Cordell, through you. That’s the most likely scenario, in our opinion. Davies is everything you’ve said, but he’s also a coward. There are still a handful of men who are strong enough in Washington to withstand Davies’s particular brand of flaming—strong enough to destroy him, if they ever find the will to do so. And those men are the ones he’s afraid of. He can’t strike back at them directly, so he chooses a substitute.”
“That does make sense.” Peter sat back in his chair. “I can tell you, on the QT, that Justice has been keeping their eye on Davies since he ran for the Senate. No one there expected him to win, but he did and that raised even more eyebrows. There had been rumors in the past, when he was a lawyer working for other local politicians, that he not only ran fast and loose with the truth, but that he didn’t bat an eye at breaking the law if it would advance his purpose.”
“Such a man in a position of power in government—one who thinks he is above the law—that’s someone to be watched and feared,” Eli said. “I also happen to know that Davies absolutely hates Cordell, because the senior Senator not only has snubbed Davies’s attempts at friendship, he called him a snot-nosed little brat. In public.”
“That would probably do it,” Jordan said. “I’ve never met the man, but his ego certainly shines big and bright when the television cameras are focused on him.”
“All right, you’ve convinced me that there is a chance he might have targeted me. Are you thinking that break-in was his doing, then?”
“Until the sheriff gets back to us with the results of his inquiry, there’s no way to be certain,” Eli said. “I know they often say in detective novels that there’s no such thing as coincidence, but really, there is.”
“And that’s the part I am having so much trouble with.” Nancy spread her hands. “Hire a goon to rip me off. Hire one to beat me up—or do worse. I can understand that. That might hurt Senator Cordell. But hire a man to rummage through my purse, to toss my wallet to the floor and keep rooting through it? That means he was looking for something, and that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“You said he had your purse in his hand when you aimed your gun,” Eli said. “You didn’t say anything about his rooting through the thing.”
Nancy blinked. What had just happened? The men, to a one, had reacted as if she’d just said something shocking. And they were all staring at her.
“I didn’t?” She looked at Eli.
“You most certainly did not,” Jeremiah said. “Not to us, nor when you recounted every detail to Adam Kendall, the way he asked you to.”
“Oh.” Nancy felt her face color. “I guess I didn’t think it made a difference—holding the purse, rooting through the thing…” her voice tapered off and she shrugged.
“You just said it yourself. He was looking for something, Nancy. Not necessarily trying to burgle you. My guess is, if you hadn’t woken up and he’d found what he was looking for, he’d have left without even disturbing you. And that changes everything.”
“I really don’t understand any of this. I didn’t have anything unusual in my purse. I didn’t do anything unusual. What on earth could he have been looking for?”
Eli reached out and took her hand in his. He squeezed it gently, and rubbed his thumb along the back of it. Then he met her gaze. “That’s the question, isn’t it? If we can answer that one question, we’ll know everything.”
Nancy supposed, since everyone else was nodding in agreement, they must know what they were talking about. She was pretty good when it came to honing legislation and keeping track of who was for and who was against, but she wasn’t much of a sleuth when it came to crime solving.
She really hoped they could figure it all out soon. She didn’t like this sense of being in limbo. And she didn’t like
the growing feeling that Eli and Jeremiah were only with her because of their jobs.
No, the sooner this was all solved, the better she would like it.
* * * *
Jeremiah Winthrop knew a thing or two about the way criminals thought. Aside from having been with the FBI for a number of years and arresting his share, his father was a psychologist who worked with criminals and the criminally insane.
He’d never needed to watch horror movies when he’d been growing up. His father’s version of the bedtime story—recounting some of the interviews he’d had with convicts—was plenty hair-raising and frightening enough.
He and his father shared one important trait between them, despite the fact that they’d followed vastly divergent career paths.
They were both near genius when it came to pattern recognition.
So as Jeremiah accompanied his woman and his best friend to the grocery store, he let his mind work on the problem of what Nancy’s burglar could have been looking for in her purse.
“There’s quite a vast selection of food here, considering the size of the town,” Eli said.
“Gus, who owns this business, ensures that if there’s something someone wants, he provides it. Plus, he makes really good sausage. He’s a butcher who used to be in charge of the meat department at a large supermarket in Houston. He took over the grocery store here, oh, must be more than twenty years ago. A lot of people in town get most of their groceries here. We support local business where we can.”
“I imagine one of the reasons for that is the local business owner is also a family member,” Jeremiah said. “So tell me, is Gus a Jessop, a Kendall, or Benedict?”
Nancy stopped and he could see she was thinking about that. Then she smiled. “Neither. His last name is Parker. Actually, he’s the great-nephew of Dr. Parker—whose first name also happened to be Jeremiah, by the way—who was the town’s physician during the 1940s.”
“I guess we didn’t stay long enough at the museum this morning to hear about the Parkers,” Eli said.
“It’s not just Parkers. It’s the Parkers, and the Joneses, and the Parker-Joneses.”
Patterns. Another one for me to work on.
Jeremiah subtly directed Nancy and Eli to put things in the cart, calculating out the meals he would make for them over the next few days. He actually loved cooking, and usually didn’t get to do it enough.
The “butcher counter” was at the rear of the store, and nearly took up the entire back wall. Everything looked good, and Jeremiah thoroughly enjoyed choosing from among the different cuts of beef and pork. Since Nancy had mentioned the sausage, he made sure to get some, and began planning how he’d serve it.
Jeremiah’s steps faltered when he got to the dairy case. For a relatively small grocery store, there seemed to be a lot of cans of whipped cream available. Oh, man, I bet the checkout clerk knows exactly who likes things a little creamier than normal. Eli stepped up beside him and looked at the array.
“Huh. Maybe the supplier was having a sale, or something.”
Nancy heard Eli’s comment, came over to see what it was they were looking at, and then snorted. Jeremiah nodded his head. He grabbed a can and looked at his best friend. “Patterns. I don’t think that’s the reason there’re so many cans of whipped cream at the Lusty Grocery.”
Eli’s slow grin and the look he gave their woman told Jeremiah that his best friend understood perfectly.
It was late afternoon when they made it back to Nancy’s house. Jeremiah was still grinning at the way he and Eli had distracted her at the checkout—with the help of a young man named Trace who’d been working the register. Before Nancy had been able to protest, their purchases were bagged and paid for.
They wouldn’t let her carry anything into the house, either. Jeremiah thought he’d never get tired of tugging on their woman’s chain a little bit. Her eyes sparkled and her skin flushed when she didn’t get her way. She’d always seemed fairly even tempered in The District, but he itched to see what she’d be like in full fury.
He knew Eli had wondered about the way she’d been treated in the past that had caused her to have those negative self-images she carried around with her. But Jeremiah was pretty certain whatever had happened to her hadn’t happened here in Lusty. That was one challenge facing them with their woman—getting to the bottom of why she saw herself the way she did, and gently correcting her skewed view. He looked forward to delving into her psyche and finding the cause and helping her overcome it.
Crap, I sound like my father.
The other issue she had, in his opinion—being entirely too used to getting her way in just about everything—that one did come from Lusty. Judging by the deference the men tended to show the women in this town, he’d bet she’d grown up a little bit pampered and a whole lot spoiled. Frustrating her need to be in control on the one hand and feeding her need to be taken care of and pampered on the other was a task that he and Eli were particularly well suited to.
Especially Eli, when it came to issues of control.
Jeremiah set his grocery bags on the kitchen counter. Then he walked over to Nancy, took her hands in his, and pulled her in for a kiss. The taste of her swayed his purpose and heated his blood. He wanted to plunge into her and move hard and fast and deep. He wanted to feel the clasp of her cunt around his cock, and shiver as the ripples of her release revved his own climax.
He lifted his lips from hers. When she opened her eyes and met his gaze, he smiled. She was it for him. He knew with utter confidence that he would never ever love another woman—not for all of the rest of his life.
“Baby, come show me where you want these groceries put, and then I’ll start the supper.”
“I can help with the preparation and the cooking.”
“I know you can, and I look forward to that another time. But your arms and shoulders are sore from target practice. I can tell by the way you’ve been moving. So tonight, why not take it easy and enjoy having your men pamper you?”
Her smile, slow and sweet, kept working on his libido. Eli joined them, and wrapped his arms around her from behind.
“I thought that’s what y’all did last night.” Nancy laid her head back against Eli and her grin was pure sex.
“Well, sure,” Eli said. “But we enjoyed doing it so much we want to do it again. And Jeremiah’s right. We can both see you’re sore.”
Nancy sighed. “I can’t argue with your reasoning, even if somewhere inside me there are some feminist bits telling me that I should, if only on principle.”
Jeremiah chuckled. “Tell your feminist bits to chill, baby. There will very likely come a day when one or the other of us will need a little pampering. Trust me, I think I can speak for us both when I say we’re looking forward to that.”
“So when that happens we’ll finally have some quid pro quo,” Nancy said. Then she shook her head and chuckled. “Forget the Washington-speak. You know what I mean.”
“Bet your very fine ass we do,” Jeremiah said.
She opened her mouth and he just knew what she was going to say next. So, apparently, did Eli.
They both said, “Don’t say it.”
Nancy snapped her mouth closed. Eli nodded. “Good girl. That ass happens to belong to us, cupcake, and we’re going to be claiming it real soon.”
Just what I needed was one more sexy image in my head. Jeremiah’s cock began to stiffen, and then stiffened a little more when Nancy let her eyes drift down, south of his belt buckle.
Her face heated and she licked her lips.
Good God almighty, I’m going to lose it in my pants if I don’t get my mind off my cock. He turned and headed toward the kitchen. “We’re having sausage for supper,” he called out behind him, “which I will start on just as soon as we get the groceries put away. I’ll make us a rice casserole to go with the meat, which I think I’ll grill.”
“Yum, sausage.” Nancy’s two purred words stopped him in his tracks. He closed his eyes and groan
ed. He’d been so focused on getting his libido under control, he’d walked right into that one. “Grilled pork sausage, you voluptuary, you.”
Nancy giggled, and that sound put a smile on Jeremiah’s face.
Then Eli, that sneaky bastard, said, “Good. I’ll help with dessert. We can have that whipped cream—and Nancy.”
Jeremiah could only chuckle. He turned to look at his woman, still relaxed within the arms of his best friend. He liked that sight, and what it meant, a lot. He couldn’t stop his smile, and decided that he really didn’t care if he sported a woody the entire time he made dinner. Nancy Jessop was worth anything he had to go through.
He nodded. “I have a feeling that before the night is through we’re going to wish we’d bought more than one can of the stuff.”
Chapter 14
Eli surprised her.
Nancy didn’t doubt her senses, not one bit. She’d already figured out that Jeremiah was the more tender lover, and Eli the more demanding. Jeremiah had his Dom moments, and she’d seen one this very day, but Eli was a Dom down to his bones—right from the beginning, he’d reminded her very much of her cousin Robert.
Yet it was Eli who kissed her hand and led her into the living room the moment the groceries had been unpacked. While Jeremiah prepared their supper, Eli brought her down to his lap and snuggled her in. He stroked her back, and rubbed her shoulders in a completely nonsexual way. Her arms and shoulders were aching from the unaccustomed target practice, and she knew without care they’d likely feel as if they were on fire by the morning.
Music began to play, and Nancy smiled. Jeremiah must have found the controls for the sound system. The house was completely wired for music, which was actually one of the main reasons she’d chosen it for herself. Activated from either the kitchen or the bedroom, she’d already programmed most of her favorite albums into it.
Love Under Two Undercover Cops [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 13
