My vocal chords were galvanized into cooperating as my cheeks turned pink. “You took your time getting back to me.”
He quirked a brow. “I didn’t know you’d called.”
“I didn’t call,” I said. “I left word with Marquita.”
“I ain’t been over there for a while.” He wandered closer to me, assessing the O’Keeffe, the baby grand, and the antiques along the way. “Your kind of place, ain’t it? All this old stuff.”
I shook my head. “The house is too modern. When you grow up in an 1839 mansion on the Antebellum Trail, a brand new house, no matter how ostentatious, just doesn’t cut it.”
Rafe didn’t answer, but he smiled. I flushed, feeling stupid. He had spent his childhood in a trailer in the Bog, surrounded by leaning walls and a leaking roof, so this place probably looked like a palace.
Then again, Mrs. Jenkins’s house on Potsdam Street, where he lived now – at least from time to time – wasn’t anything to sneeze at, either. Circa 1889, it was a three-story Victorian with a ballroom on the third floor and a circular tower on the southeast corner. It needed a ton of work, some of which he had done, some which he hadn’t gotten around to yet, but it had all the personality this cookie-cutter McMansion lacked.
“So what’s been going on,” I asked, “that you haven’t been over to see your grandmother lately?”
“I spent the night with Tammy Grimaldi.” His voice was so even that it took a moment for the words to sink in. Just as the realization of what he’d said sucker-punched me in the stomach, he added, “So what is it you want, darlin’?”
“Want?” I repeated blankly.
“If you went toe to toe with Marquita, you gotta want something. What is it?”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” I grimaced. “I wanted to tell you that Lila Vaughn was dead. But if you spent the night with Tamara Grimaldi, I guess you already know that.”
His eyes were opaque. “The subject came up, yeah.”
“Pillow talk?”
Try as I might – and I wasn’t trying that hard – my voice came out sounding snippier than I wanted it to. His lips curved.
“Never mind,” I added, with what little dignity I could muster. Goodness, how humiliating! I wouldn’t blame him for thinking I was jealous.
His voice was easy. “You’re giving me too much credit, darlin’. Women like Tammy Grimaldi don’t look twice at somebody like me.”
“You haven’t heard the way she asks questions about you,” I answered.
He laughed. “That ain’t cause she likes me, darlin’. She probably thinks I’m doing something I shouldn’t be.”
“And are you?” The words just fell out of my mouth without conscious thought, and Rafe chuckled.
“I’m sure I’m doing plenty of stuff I shouldn’t be.”
“Like what?”
“You sure you wanna know, darlin’?”
I hesitated. For just long enough to make it difficult to say yes. “You said you had things to do this afternoon,” I said instead. “What happened?”
He shrugged. “Change of plans.”
“Well, if you didn’t speak to Marquita and get my message, how did you know I wanted to talk to you?”
That was easy, he didn’t.
“So what are you doing here?” I asked.
“Maybe I just came by to pick up where we left off last week.” He grinned, and I took an immediate step back, fetching up against the nearest piece of antique furniture with a bump that sent the elegant console-table knocking against the wall. He laughed. “Relax, darlin’. After Tammy told me what’d happened to Lila, I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“I see,” I said. “That’s really quite nice of you, to take time out to check on me. Do you want to go back to her, now that you’ve seen that I’m all right?”
He laughed. “What exactly d’you think we were doing, darlin’? I spent the night in jail. She hauled me in for questioning around 8 o’clock yesterday, kept at me till one in the morning, let me sleep for five hours, and came back to work at seven. Then we kept going in circles till one, when she finally let me leave. I had to tell her you were waiting for me before she’d let me out of her sight. She’s probably outside right now, making sure I’m doing what I said I was gonna do.”
“So you’re only here because you told her you would be?”
He shrugged, looking around. “You alone?”
“No, actually. There’s a young couple around somewhere. They went back that way, to look at the master suite...” I pointed, “it must be ten minutes ago now.”
And they hadn’t come back yet.
Maybe Gary Lee and Charlene had overheard our conversation and decided to make themselves scarce until we had finished. Or maybe they’d exited from the master suite out onto the deck, and had gone around the house to their car that way. Maybe I really was alone. Except for Rafe, who was making me feel just a touch apprehensive. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering. Busy day?”
“Not too bad. Seventeen visitors, eighteen with you. I’ve seen worse.”
“You sure you shouldn’t check up on your couple? If you ain’t heard a noise for ten minutes, they could be up to all sorts of trouble. Going through the medicine cabinets, pocketing the silverware, strangling one another...”
I shook my head. “They’re nice kids. Newlyweds looking for their first house. I met them two weeks ago at your grandmother’s open house, and I’ve shown them a couple of homes since then. They have another they want to see tomorrow. They’re not doing anything wrong.”
“It’s almost time to close up, though. You don’t wanna leave nobody behind.”
I glanced at my watch. “If they’re not out here in two minutes, I’ll go look for them. Just out of curiosity, why are you being so helpful? You don’t have a moving truck on standby outside, do you?”
“After what happened to Lila? No, darlin’. I ain’t that stupid.”
“Good to know,” I said, wondering whether he really had just admitted that he’d been involved in the open house robberies or if my imagination was running away with me.
“Course, if you’ve got a hankering for being tied up, I could oblige just to make you happy.”
“After what happened to Lila?” I said. “No, thanks. I’m not that stupid.”
“Good to know,” Rafe said with a grin, which faded when he added, “I’m sorry about your friend. You all right?” His dark eyes were probing.
I could feel tears prickling at the back of my own eyes, and deliberately made my voice crisp to keep them at bay. “As well as I can expect to be. We hadn’t known each other long, but I liked her a lot. I hope they catch whoever did it.”
Rafe opened his mouth to speak, but just then Gary Lee and Charlene appeared, hand in hand and giggling, and he closed it again. “Sorry, Savannah,” Gary Lee said. “We got... um... tied up.”
I grimaced. Bad choice of words under the circumstances, but of course they didn’t know that. “No problem. If it was just us, I’d let you stay as long as you wanted, but the owners will be back soon, and we should be gone by then.”
“Sure.” They nodded, glancing curiously from Rafe, standing in front of the O’Keeffe, hands in his pockets and face inscrutable, to me. Charlene contemplated him with her head tilted, much the same way he contemplated the O’Keeffe; like a connoisseur assessing a work of art. Gary Lee was watching me. “Um... Savannah?”
I nodded.
“You OK?”
“Fine,” I said. “Why...?”
He glanced over at Rafe.
“Oh,” I added, as I realized that he was worried about me. “This is Rafael Collier. He’s an... um... old friend.”
Rafe’s lips curved. Charlene giggled.
“Right,” Gary Lee said. “None of my business. C’mon, babe.” He steered Charlene toward the door, telling me over his shoulder, “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there,” I promised. “Three-thirty.”
/>
“If you can’t make it, just call,” Charlene said. “If, like, something comes up.” She giggled.
I grimaced. Gary Lee looked embarrassed.
“Comes up,” Charlene added. “Get it? Comes up!”
I nodded. “I got it. Thanks, Charlene. If I can’t make it, I’ll definitely call.” Although I knew, as she obviously didn’t, that the chances of something coming up, in the way she meant, were slim indeed. Or rather, if something did come up, it wouldn’t make me late for our appointment. Whatever came up would come down on its own, with no help from me, and that was all there was to it.
Chapter 8
“So,” Rafe said when they’d left, “that’s the happy couple.”
I nodded. “Aren’t they cute? I remember being that young and happy once. Then I married Bradley.”
“I didn’t peg you for a cynic.” He started wandering again, looking around.
“Who, me?” I followed, wondering where he was headed. “Only when it comes to marriage. Or remarriage. Todd was telling me the other night that I need a husband, and I felt like he had punched me in the stomach.”
“Depends on the husband, don’t it?” He peered into the dining room, with its custom-made chandelier and glass topped table.
“I imagine it might,” I admitted. “In this case, I think Todd was thinking of himself.”
Rafe took time away from his inspection of a Japanese vase to glance at me. “Proposed, did he?”
I shook my head. “Not exactly. He just hinted. Although I suppose he might have come out and said something specific if I’d given him some encouragement.”
“Something to remember for next time.”
Rafe moved on, in the direction of the kitchen. My heart started beating faster as he slipped through the door. This could be it. I could be on my way to being tied to one of the chairs, like Kieran and Lila.
“You know,” I said, lingering in the doorway, “Todd’s still going on about how dangerous you are, and how I need to stay away from you. I keep asking him what you’ve done that’s so bad, but he just makes ominous noises and says there are things about you I don’t know.”
“No kidding?” He zeroed in on the breakfast bar with its four leather-topped bar stools. I kept an eye on his hands, just in case he planned to pull a coil of rope out from under his jacket and lasso me.
“No. So what is it about you I don’t know?”
“Most everything, I’d say.” He stopped behind the bar, where I’d placed the informative brochures and a guest register. I wondered if he was waiting for me to sit down across from him, and that’s when he’d be whipping out the rope.
“Why don’t you tell me something, then.” I stayed right where I was, at a safe distance both from him and the chairs. Connie and Perry wouldn’t find me trussed like a turkey when they came home.
He squinted at me, twirling the pen between his fingers. “Something...?”
“Something about you. Like, you secretly read poetry. Or you’re a Cordon Bleu cook. Or you make your living as a motorcycle mechanic. Or you’ve got an ex-wife and four kids somewhere.”
He stared at me in silence for a second, pen forgotten between his fingers. “I don’t read much of anything. Don’t like sitting still. I don’t cook. I don’t have a wife, current or ex, and if I’ve got kids, nobody’s bothered to tell me. I’ve tried to make sure I don’t, seeing as how I know what it’s like to grow up without a daddy.”
I nodded. Tyrell Jenkins had been shot dead before Rafe was born, and the closest thing to a father he’d had growing up, was his grandfather Jim, who was the person who had shot Tyrell. Not exactly the best situation to grow up in. I didn’t blame him at all for not wanting to inflict that same fate on another innocent. Of course, he could have avoided the problem by settling down with someone and raising whatever kids he sired with her, but he obviously didn’t consider himself the settling-down kind, either.
He continued blandly, “As for the mechanic thing, it ain’t how I make my living, though I’ve been known to get my hands dirty on occasion.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised to hear that.”
He grinned and lowered his eyes to the counter. As I watched, he scribbled his name on the bottom of the guest register and put the pen down on top. I forgot myself and wandered into the kitchen. “What are you doing?”
“Ain’t that what I’m supposed to do? Sign this paper?”
“If you’re a visitor, sure. But...”
“I’m here, ain’t I? You want I should have a look around while you pack up your stuff? Just to make sure nobody’s hanging around?”
I squinted at him, suspiciously. “You won’t open up a window or door so someone can come in later and rob the place, will you?”
“Would I do that to you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Would you?”
“You’re just gonna have to trust me, darlin’.” He headed for the door, and I jumped out of his path. He arched a brow, but didn’t comment, just continued on past me. I watched him walk away, to make sure he was really leaving the room and wouldn’t suddenly turn around and hog-tie me like a recalcitrant calf if I let my guard down.
By the time he came back, I had gathered my guest list and all my paraphernalia – pens, paper, silver-plated cookie tray, scented candles, and fancy napkins – and put it all together in a bag, which I was dragging toward the front door. Rafe grabbed it out of my hand and lifted it easily. “I got it.”
“Thank you. Why are you being so nice to me today?”
“I’m always nice to you,” Rafe said, holding the front door open. I rolled my eyes and stepped through, only to come face to face with Connie Fortunato, who had just ascended the steps.
She looked rather the worse for wear, her eyes puffy and her make-up smeared, and she was brought up short when she saw us. For a second, it seemed as if she might turn and run. However, she made an effort to pull herself together and do the proper thing.
“Oh, Savannah. I didn’t realize you’d still be here.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized, with a discreet glance at my wrist. “We had some late visitors, and then it took time to pack up and make sure all the doors and windows were secured.”
She nodded, but distractedly, like my words hadn’t really registered on a conscious level. “And who is this?” Even under the circumstances, with her mind clearly on something else, she couldn’t help but respond to Rafe’s rock’em, sock’em sex-appeal by lowering her eyelashes and looking at him from below.
“Hired muscle,” I said.
Rafe grinned. “I’m her bodyguard.”
“Lucky girl.” Connie glanced over at me and back to him. “Might you be available to guard my body sometime?” She managed a passable smile.
“If you two would like to be alone,” I said, “I’d be happy to leave now.”
Rafe grinned. “She doesn’t like to share her toys.”
He winked at Connie and put his free arm around my shoulders. I stuck my tongue out at him, and he laughed out loud. Connie looked at me down the length of her sculpted nose. Now that I saw her again, up close, I put her age closer to forty than thirty. Of course, the downward turn of her lips and the tear-tracks on her cheeks didn’t help. It’s difficult to look one’s best after a good cry, or – as in this case – a bad one.
“Are you OK?” I asked, my better self taking over.
“Fine.” She pressed her lips together. After a moment she added, reluctantly, “I just received some bad news.”
I nodded sympathetically. “I’ve had some of that lately, too. Is there anything I can do?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, thank you. I’ve just discovered that a friend of mine has passed away. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “A friend of mine passed away recently, too. I know what you’re going through.”
Connie’s pale blue eyes filled up with tears. “Thank you. I’m going to miss her.”
I nodded. “I’m going to miss Lila, as well.”
“Lila?” Connie repeated. I gave her Lila’s full name and saw her eyes light with recognition. It seemed we hadn’t both lost friends this week; we’d lost the same friend.
“How did you know Lila?” I asked.
“We did volunteer-work together.” Connie dabbed at her own eyes with a tissue.
“She told me she was volunteering somewhere.” And how helpful it had been to her career, because it allowed her to meet people. Rich people. People with expensive houses they might want to sell. “I suppose, now that she’s gone, you’ll be short-handed. I’d be happy to take her place, if you think I would be of help.”
Connie sniffed. “We meet on Monday nights at 6:30, in the small drawing room at the Cheekwood Museum and Gardens. If you’re not busy tomorrow, I’m sure everyone would love to have you.”
“In that case,” I said, “I’ll be there.”
Connie dabbed at her eyes again and excused herself to go inside, with one last look at Rafe. We started down the steps, only to be brought up short by the appearance of Perry, coming toward us from the direction of the garage. He must have gone to stable the car. “Oh, Savannah,” he said, with considerably more enthusiasm than Connie, “you’re still here.”
His voice changed, “And you invited a friend.” His tone indicated that I’d overstepped my rights.
Rafe grinned. “Rafael Collier,” he said, extending a hand. Perry took it, but with the expression of a man palming a dead fish.
“It was Tim’s idea,” I explained. “He wanted to ensure that I had somebody with me who’d be able to protect me if something went wrong. Because of the robberies and the murder, you know.”
“Very considerate of Tim,” Perry said. I nodded. Rafe didn’t speak, but the two of them stared at each other like two dogs in an alley. I’d seen Todd do the same thing when confronted with Rafe, so it must be some innate male thing. Alpha-dog staring, or something.
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