Wearing only a towel, she crossed back to her bedroom and dressed quickly, choosing a pair of cut-off jean shorts and a simple pink Henley tank top. Leaving her hair wet, she picked up her newfound resolve, and descended the stairs in her bare feet.
“Good morning.” Sunny stepped into the kitchen and surveyed the mountainous mess of mixing bowls, egg shells, and greasy paper towels. But, the puddle of drying pancake batter on the counter was easily forgotten as Jake turned and flashed her his killer grin. He must have gone home for a shower, because he wore different khaki shorts and a clean white t-shirt. His hair still looked wet around the ends of his blond curls.
“Hey.” He studied her face before quietly asking, “How you doin’ this morning?”
“I’m okay.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Really. I’m fine. Or I will be fine,” she assured him, her tone portraying the new confidence that she felt. “But I’m glad you’re here.”
“I am too,” he said sincerely. He seemed to understand her brave new attitude, and his grin returned to his ridiculously gorgeous face. “So, how do you like your eggs?”
“Over medium.” Sunny came around the counter and peered into a frying pan full of four eggs and a quarter inch of bubbling bacon grease.
Jake flipped the eggs, and another droplet of grease splashed onto the stovetop.
“I like mine sunny-side-up,” he said, with that devilish smile of his. Sunny couldn’t tell if that was a double entendre and he was flirting with her, or if that was really just the way he liked his eggs.
“Can I do anything to help?” Sunny looked around for any task that would distract her from thinking which of her sides would be considered the side-up.
He had set the small table in her kitchen nook, and a mug and a small juice glass sat empty on the counter.
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted coffee, juice, or milk, so I left those empty.” Jake gestured to the glasses. “I found the butter, but I haven’t found the syrup yet.”
He flipped a stack of pancakes onto one side of a platter and slid the eggs onto the other side. Opening the microwave, he pulled out a plate covered in greasy paper towels which she assumed contained the heavenly smelling bacon. Sunny poured herself some milk, retrieved the syrup from the pantry, then took a seat at the table as he brought plates over and set them down. He stepped back to refill his coffee mug before he joined her at the table.
“Thanks for breakfast.” Sunny smiled into his eyes. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I know. But I wanted to,” he said. “There are a lot of things I want to do for you, Sunny, starting with telling you the truth.”
Her chest constricted, and a bite of pancake stuck in her throat as he reached into his back pocket and pulled forth a black wallet that he tossed on the table in front of her.
Sunny set down the fork and took a drink of milk to help the pancake along. She had just told herself she wanted the truth, but now that it was sitting on the table in front of her, was she brave enough to pick it up and face it?
Taking a deep breath, she reached out and opened the wallet. Sunny gasped as she took in the shiny gold badge on one side of the wallet and the Federal Bureau of Investigations ID on the other. The ID had a picture of Jake and the title “Agent Jake Landon” on it.
“You’re with the FBI?” she asked, incredulously.
“Yep.”
“How do I know this is real?” She fingered the thick gold medal of the badge. The only FBI badges Sunny had ever seen belonged to Mulder and Scully, so she couldn’t be sure, but this one looked real.
He laughed. “It’s real. But you can call them if you want to verify it.”
“Who would I call? The Pentagon? Maybe I should dial 1-800-CALL-FBI.”
He laughed again, then his eyes turned serious. “It’s real, and my feelings for you and your big fat dog are real.”
Her heart beat quickened as Sunny looked into his deep blue eyes. Isn’t this was she was hoping for? I like you too is what she wanted to say, but instead, Sunny said, “First of all, my dog isn’t fat, and second of all, so now I know you’re an FBI agent. Well now that explains…let’s see…oh yeah…absolutely nothing. Except maybe why you have a gun and why Officer McCarthy didn’t do anything about you beating up Hank last night. Wait. Does he know you’re an FBI agent?”
“Yeah. I told him the first night you had the intruder. Well, I guess now we know it was Hank, who tried to come into your window. That’s why I left and went back to my house when the police arrived. So I’d be able to show them my credentials without you and your Murder She Wrote-watching neighbor around.”
The wheels were really turning now, and Sunny blurted out, “So that’s who you’ve been talking to on the phone?”
Jake nodded.
“And that’s why you were carrying a gun?”
He nodded again.
“But that doesn’t explain why you’re here, or what your connection is to Walter, or why you took a bloody shirt into that private investigator?”
“Bloody shirt? What? How’d you know about the bloody shirt, and how did you know about Finney?”
“Piper and Drew saw you the first day when you dropped it off. Then Cassie and I followed you the day you picked it up. We sort of eavesdropped on you and the private investigator, and found out the blood was Walter’s.”
“Why, you little sneaks.” A look of almost admiration crossed his face. “I thought I saw Piper that first day, eating lunch at the restaurant across the street.”
“But why did you have a shirt with Walter’s blood on it? Was he bleeding when you killed him?” Sunny blurted out.
“Killed him?” he asked, incredulously. “Why would I kill him? I’m trying to find the person who did kill him. The shirt is evidence and hopefully a clue to finding the actual killer.”
“Well, if you’re with the FBI, why did you take the shirt to a private investigator instead of a fancy FBI lab?”
“I did send a sample to the ‘fancy FBI lab’, but Finney’s got connections and he can sometimes expedite lab results and I wanted to know if that was Walter’s blood as soon as possible. Besides, Finn’s a friend that I can trust. And he owed me a favor.”
“Okay. But, we know you showed up right before the explosion, and Edna saw you drive up in the middle of the night with a briefcase, and a gun, and a mysterious duffle bag.”
“Oh, my gosh. I’m dealing with a bunch of wanna-be Nancy Drews.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“We’re a little older than the girl in the movie though.”
“There’s a movie? About Nancy Drew?”
Seriously, both he and Edna needed to get out more.
“Look,” Jake said, “despite all your ‘evidence’ to the contrary, I did not kill Walter. I was gonna tell you this anyway, he’s actually my grandfather.”
“I know.”
“You know? How in the world did you know that?”
“Well, I found Walter’s will that day at your house when you were asking me about his computer. And it was drawn up by Maggie’s firm, so I asked her about it. She swore me to secrecy and wouldn’t give me all the details, but she did tell me you really were Walter’s grandson.”
“So you’ve known the whole time?”
“Sure.”
“Then how could you still think I killed him?”
“Well, Edna also saw you carrying a mysterious trash bag to your car which we later found out was his bloody shirt. And you always seemed to be around when strange stuff happened. Like me being stalked.”
“I was around because I was trying to protect you. I knew Walter had disappeared, and I was trying to figure out who I could trust in case it was someone in the neighborhood. If I would have known I had the cast from CSI digging into the case, I would have enlisted all of your help a lot sooner.”
Sunny kind of liked the idea of being compared to CSI, the real one in Las Vegas, not the knock-offs in those other citi
es. Did he think she was like that sexy Catherine Willows or was he comparing her to the nerdy, but still cute, lab girl with the ponytail?
“Sunny?”
“Yeah,” she said, jerking herself out of the murderous streets of Las Vegas and back into her kitchen.
“Why don’t we finish our breakfast, then I’ll start from the beginning and tell you everything?” He stuck a piece of crispy bacon into his mouth.
Sunny nodded and cut into her pancake, the syrup making a brown pool around the fried eggs.
They finished eating in companionable silence. Sunny’s thoughts raced with a thousand questions. Her tingly spots were on alert as she replayed his words, I like you and My feelings for you are real, and the fact that he included her dog in his feelings had her heart melting like chocolate in the warm sun.
She still needed answers, though. She took her plate to the sink, and as they loaded the dishwasher, Jake told her the whole story.
“About five years ago,” he said, “I was assigned to a case involving a man who was murdered and the prime suspect was his wife. The case was eventually ruled an accident, and that probably would have been the end of it, if another husband of the same woman didn’t end up dead about a year later. The woman’s name is Mona Masterson, but she has a bunch of aliases. She also goes by Debbie Davidson and Madelyn March. She’s been married four times in the past five years, and all of her husbands have died in different ways, so we call her the Black Widow.”
“How does she get all these men to marry her so quickly?” Sunny asked, intrigued with the story. She used her fingernail to scratch off droplets of dried pancake batter stuck to the counter.
“She preys on lonely older men who have no family to protect them. And she’s also gorgeous.”
“But how does she meet them?”
“Usually on internet dating sites.” He looked at her expectantly.
“Aaahh.” Things began to click into place. “That’s why you had that weird online profile that made you sound so lonely. Lonely? Oh no, Walter’s profile was Lonely1. He’s just asking to be chosen by her. Wait. Are you telling me that this Black Widow is the one who killed Walter?”
“We don’t know yet that she killed him, but we do know that she communicated with him online. We put my profile out there to try to lure her away from him and into a sting operation with me going undercover.”
“Why didn’t you just go to Walter and warn him? He’s your grandpa, for goodness sakes. Wouldn’t the FBI let you just go talk to him?”
“It wasn’t the FBI stopping me,” he said. “Walter is my grandfather, but I’ve never met him. This is the part where things get a little tricky.”
He went to the coffeepot to refill his mug. He held the pot up, and Sunny pushed her cup toward him. He topped off the cup, slid the pot back into the holder, then turned to the fridge to get out her French Vanilla creamer. Sunny grinned.
What? So he knows how I like my coffee. So what? He’s an FBI agent. He’s trained to be observant, right?
They took their coffee into the living room and settled onto the sofa. Sunny took her favorite corner and curled her legs under her, and he sat in the middle and stretched his legs out on the coffee table. Beau followed them in. He jumped up onto the opposite corner of the sofa, circled the cushion twice, pawed at the throw pillow, and with a sigh, settled onto the cushion with his head resting in Jake’s lap. He looked up at Jake with big brown eyes as he waited expectantly for Jake to pet him.
Jake absently stroked the dog’s head as he continued his story. “My mother’s name is Carol Mead Landon. She was Walter and Betty’s only daughter. I think she was the typical only child, spoiled and praised for everything she did. According to her, they had high hopes for her future, and she was very close to them. That was until she turned seventeen and found out she was pregnant. She said it broke her Dad’s heart. He told her he would help her to ‘take care of it’, and who knows what that means, but evidently they got into a huge fight and probably both said things they didn’t mean. My mom being a teenager and a hormonal one at that, she ran off that night and didn’t speak to her parents for twenty-five years.”
“What about your dad?” Sunny asked.
“Never knew my dad,” he answered. “It’s always just been my mom and me. She never told me what happened with my dad, and after a while I quit asking.”
“You said they didn’t speak for twenty-five years, so they’ve been in contact the past five…” She looked at him questionably, “…or ten years?”
“Something like that,” he said. “My mom finally broke down and called her mom, my grandmother. I was on assignment in another country when all this took place, but according to my mom, the two of them met, had a tearful reunion, yada, yada, yada, and my grandmother begged my mom to forgive her dad and meet with him. Betty explained to my mom that, of course her dad was upset, but if she would have only stayed long enough to finish the argument, they could have worked it all out together. My mom threw back the “take care of it” comment my grandfather had made, and my grandmother explained that Walter had really meant take care of it, as in he and Betty would help to ‘take care of’ as in ‘raise’ the baby. She told my mother how her leaving had broken my grandfather’s heart. Fast forward thru more weeping and explaining, and suffice it to say my mother and grandmother patched things up just in time for my grandmother to find out she had cancer. My mom took me to meet her before she passed away, but my mom just couldn’t face her dad yet.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you got to meet Betty, though. She was a wonderful lady. I’m sorry you missed out on knowing her your whole life. And Walter, too. He’s really a great guy. Did your mom ever get to see him?”
“She did. She finally called him last year, and the two of them met and were making progress on repairing their relationship. Then I came back stateside and got involved in the Black Widow case. When Walter’s name came up as one of her possible next victims, I made arrangements to come out here and meet with him. I had spoken with him on the phone, but we hadn’t scheduled an actual visit. He said he wanted to see me, and then all of sudden we couldn’t reach him, and I stopped hearing from him. We waited a week or so, and then I flew out and came to his house. I focused mainly on the house and had only looked thru the windows of the garage before it exploded. I was afraid that he could have been in there, either alive, or he could have already been dead when the place went up in flames. I’m still waiting to hear the final results of the arson investigation from Tom Marshal, the detective assigned to the case. He told me it would be several weeks before all the tests came back. I hope to hear something from him soon.”
“Did he know you were an FBI Agent?”
“Who, Tom? Not until after your Mini-Ms. Marple threw suspicion on me by telling him I carried a gun. Then I had to fill him in on the investigation.”
“Do you really think this Mona-woman killed Walter?”
“I don’t know for sure. It’s definitely her style of making a death look like an accident. We know he was communicating with a woman on the dating site, but we haven’t been able to directly link him to Mona.”
“So, what now?”
“I’m not really sure. We wait for the detective to come back with the results, and I keep investigating, and we hope I get a hit from her on my fake online dating match site.”
“But what now…for us? Why did you tell me all this now?” Sunny looked into his eyes, and his face turned serious. He slid his left arm behind her on the sofa as he moved closer.
“I told you. I like you, Sunny. I have since the first day you chucked those frozen chicken chunks at me. I don’t want secrets between us, and I sure as hell don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
Her heartbeat quickened. “I like you, too,” she said softly.
He reached under her knees and pulled her legs forward to rest in his lap. Beau lifted his head so Sunny’s foot wouldn’t kick him in the face. Jake’s left arm dropped from the back of the
sofa to curl around her shoulders, and his right hand crossed to cup her hip.
He moved his face closer. “You okay?”
Was I okay? Okay enough, despite the fact that her heart was beating out of her chest, her mouth was dry as unbuttered toast, and she was pretty sure she was sweating. But this amazing man, who actually was dangerous, but in a good way, liked her enough to divulge his undercover operation to her. And now his hand was running up and down her arm, coming treacherously close to her breast with each movement.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she whispered. Sunny’s back arched as she pressed herself to him.
He slowly brought his mouth closer, and took her bottom lip into his with the gentlest of kisses. He softly kissed her again and then again.
He had kissed her before, but this time felt different. Her suspicions were gone, and he had told her personal details about his life. This felt comfortable, more intimate. And sexy as hell!
He kissed her once more, his hand running down to her knee, then back up to finger the fringes of her cutoff shorts. Sunny moaned softly into his mouth. His hand tightened on her outer thigh. His arm curled around Sunny’s back and pulled her closer. The same arms he had used to gently carry her dog to her when she needed him. The same arms he had flexed as he helped her pull weeds in the flower garden. The same arms that held her when her neighbor’s garage burst into flames, and he came running to find her.
Her thoughts ran to images of Jake as he...
Oh hell, why am I thinking anyway? Sunny threw her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth to hers as her hand fisted in his hair. She clutched his back and squirmed to get her bottom more into his lap. Sunny accidentally kicked Beau, who acted affronted and stepped off the sofa with a groan.
Jake’s strong arm laid her back as he smoothly adjusted their bodies so they were lying side by side. His kisses deepened, and her skin burned as he slid his hand underneath the tank top to cup her breast. He thumbed her erect nipple through her bra, and Sunny groaned again and pressed her hips closer to his. She could feel that he wanted her, and she rubbed herself against him in slow movements.
Another Saturday Night and I Ain't Got No Body (A Page Turners Novel) Page 23
