скачать книгу бесплатно
Leaning against the rail above him, Faye caught the mingled scents of cut grass and hot male. She had another funny tummy flutter. “Well…”
“It’s going to look bad if I quit now.”
Faye surveyed the partially mown yard. He was right. “Well, I guess you could finish.”
“Good.” He grinned at her. “I hate to leave anything half-finished.”
Her pulse pounded. That sounded like a warning. Or a dare.
Possibility expanded in her like orange pigment spreading on wet paper. Three months ago, she might have taken up his challenge. Three months ago, she had a naive faith in herself and an inflated sense of her own ability to deal with things.
Faye stepped back from the deck rail, instinctively hugging her right arm against her chest. She couldn’t deal with things anymore. She certainly couldn’t handle whatever this hot, half-naked man was offering.
“I’ll let you get back to it, then,” she said, and reached behind her back to fumble with the sliding door.
His gaze sharpened. His smile faded. “Faye—”
“I have work to do.” She turned tail and bolted like the coward she was.
It wasn’t just cowardice, she told herself. She needed to get that sheet taped down before it dried or her morning’s work would be wasted.
The pretty landscapes on the wall mocked her. Flat water. Empty sky. Her work was wasted anyway.
She pushed the thought away.
She cut the lengths of paper tape —clackety clackety, from the corner of her eye, she could see Aleksy, pushing, sweating—and pressed them to the edges of the drying sheet to stretch it —clackety clack as he passed the cottage again—and pinned the corners with thumb-tacks.
Silence.
Faye straightened. Her back ached. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears. Was he gone?
Pressing a hand to the small of her back, she walked to the doors. The sun beat down on the green, empty strip of grass.
Gone.
She was…relieved. Of course she was relieved. She refused to identify the sinking in her chest as disappointment. She turned back to her empty living room, but with all the quiet and time and space to create in she couldn’t bring herself to pick up a paintbrush. Maybe she would go down to the lake and take photographs?
Yes. She nodded to herself. That would ease this odd restlessness. She stuffed her feet into sandals, grabbed her camera from the narrow table behind the sofa and went out the sliding doors.
Aleksy sluiced water over his arms. Standing waist deep in the cold lake might help cure his sexual frustration, but it didn’t do a thing to relieve his itchy mood. After three days of surveillance, he had exactly nothing on Freer. No unexplained absences, no unknown visitors, no unauthorized stores of munitions in the gun dealer’s boathouse.
Aleksy needed some action. Now.
A break in the case. A roll in the hay. Anything to kill the mind-numbing boredom and make this exile in Pleasantville feel like something besides a colossal waste of his time. Mowing pretty Faye Harper’s lawn didn’t count.
He thought of the tiny blonde’s bare, arched feet, her wide, intrigued eyes and grinned. Now there was a woman who could provide a man with a little diversion.
Yeah, if he was dumb enough to let himself be distracted. Which Aleksy was not. Not yet. Not without some encouragement, anyway.
He dunked his head. And when he raised it dripping from the water, felt that unmistakable tingle at the back of his neck. His life preserver. The cop’s sixth sense. The awareness that someone, somewhere, was watching him.
Hell.
His sweat-soaked jeans were on the rocky bank behind him. His gun was out of reach, under his folded shirt. He’d better hope some vacationing tourist had stumbled on him skinny-dipping or he was in big trouble here.
He ran his hands over his face, like he needed to wipe the water from his eyes. He turned slowly, squinting through his fingers to scan the sloping bank.
The rocks were empty. His clothes were undisturbed. But a flash of pale blue—someone’s shirt, he guessed—drew his attention up the bank. There in the bushes, a camera in her hands and pure confusion on her face, stood little Faye Harper.
Aleksy grinned. The day was looking up.
He lowered his hands. “Like what you see?”
Her fair skin made her an easy mark. She blushed bright red. “I didn’t know you were here.”
He believed her. But he couldn’t resist teasing her. He shrugged. “Whatever.”
“I didn’t!”
He smiled.
She lifted her chin and some of the cream puff air fell away. “I don’t think this arrangement is working. Frankly, Mr. Denko, you’re intruding on my privacy.”
He felt a moment’s regret. But she couldn’t get rid of him that easily. Not until he had proof one way or the other of Freer’s complicity in Karen’s death. “I’d go easy with the accusations, sweetheart. At least I’m not taking your picture in the buff.”
“I was not taking your picture.”
He gestured. “So, what’s with the camera?”
She looked down at the camera in her hands as if she’d never seen one before. He stifled another grin.
“Oh. I’m taking backup shots of landscapes.” Her voice gained confidence as she spoke. “To prompt my memory when I’m in the studio.”
That was actually kind of interesting. Which just went to prove he’d been standing in the water too long.
“Yeah, well, you better turn your back,” he said. “Or I’m going to give you something else to remember.”
Her face set in cool, disapproving lines. He could almost see how Miss Pixie might have kept order in a classroom.
“That won’t be necessary. I’m going into town now.”
“Running away?”
“Running errands.”
“That could be good,” he decided. After five days of bug bites and boredom, he was ready for a new angle. Karen’s lead only took him as far as the town. Maybe all this time, he’d been barking up the wrong tree. Staking out the wrong dock. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“It would be good cover,” he said.
“I don’t want you to come.”
So she was running away. Aleksy tried to find that encouraging. Maybe he got to her the way she, improbably, got to him.
He observed her stiff face and the way she held her right arm braced across her chest. Or maybe she couldn’t stand the sight of him.
“Just into town,” he said. “You can let me out at—what is it?—Harbor Street.”
Faye shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve let you stay, but I won’t be involved in—in whatever it is you’re doing. You’ll have to drive yourself to town.”
The unnaturally red-haired woman behind the counter at Weiglund’s Camera—Greta, her name tag read—beamed at Faye as she popped her film into an envelope.
“You sure do take a lot of pictures for a single gal. Have you heard from your aunt Eileen yet?”
Faye blinked at the woman’s intrusive interest. Friendly interest, she told herself. It couldn’t hurt her. No one in Eden thought she’d done anything wrong. “I had a postcard from Galway. She thinks she’s found the parish where her grandmother was born.”
“Isn’t that exciting,” Greta Weiglund said, sealing the envelope and tossing it into a box behind her. “And do you like it at the cottage?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Not your first visit?”
“I— No. I used to come when I was a little girl.”
“I thought I remembered that,” Greta said with satisfaction. “Of course, you stayed with your auntie, then. Don’t you find it lonely now?”
Dear heaven. “No. Are my other pictures ready?”
“Let me just check. I heard the police were out there the other day. A trespasser, was it?”
Faye fumbled with her wallet. Living in Chicago, she’d grown used to fending off muggers, purse snatchers and panhandlers. But she was defenseless against Eden’s small town grapevine. “It wasn’t anything. A—a misunderstanding.”
Greta twinkled knowingly. “A young man, I heard. Are you seeing each other?”
Faye had a mental flash of Aleksy half-naked in the lake, the damp hair curling on his chest, his dusky nipples puckered with cold. Seeing each other?
“I— That is—”
I didn’t want to blow my cover, he’d told her. I’m working a case.
Faye bit her lip. “I guess you could say we see each other occasionally.”
Greta Weiglund nodded encouragement. “Isn’t that nice?”
It was awful.
Faye did not want to get involved. On her way back to the car, past the Rose Farms Café and Tompkins Hardware, she rehearsed to herself all the other things she could have said to deflect gossip.
I’m not sure who you’re talking about.
We’re just friends.
That’s Raoul. He does the yard work.
“Faye!”
A man’s voice. Calling her name. She froze. But it was only Richard Freer smiling at her from the gleaming glass entrance of his sporting goods store, as well-groomed and ruggedly handsome as a race car driver hawking motor oil.
Eileen Harper didn’t like him. “Cuckoos,” she called him and the other wealthy residents who bought up land across the lake to build newer, grander houses. But he was the closest thing to a neighbor Faye had. They seldom spoke, but he always waved when he saw her.
He strolled forward onto the sidewalk. “I know Eden’s not the big city, but I didn’t know you were so hard up for entertainment here that you’d started talking to yourself.”
She forced a smile. “Hi, Richard. Sorry. I was distracted.”
“I could see that.” He looked her over with the confident air of a man used to paying for—and getting—what he wanted. Faye caught herself stiffening and ordered her muscles to relax. He didn’t mean anything by it. And she’d given up taking stands over things she couldn’t control.
“I haven’t seen you on the lake,” he said. “What are you doing with yourself?”
She wondered if she should try out her yard boy explanation on him. No. “Nothing much.”
His gaze focused on the bag she carried. “Still taking pictures?”
They were neighbors, of sorts. He’d seen her out with her camera, and she’d explained about her painting.
“A few.”
“Heard you had some trouble at your place the other day.” He shifted closer and lowered his voice. “You know, a woman alone should always have protection at hand.”
He couldn’t mean… Condoms?
“No, ma’am, you don’t want to be caught unprepared if a situation arises suddenly where you need it.”
Faye goggled.
“A gun,” Richard said firmly. “A nice, light ladies’ handgun, that’s what you need.”
“Oh.” Faye’s breath escaped on a shaky laugh. “I don’t think—”
“You’ve got to take care of yourself. A couple of vagrants have been spotted at the lake. I’ve seen one myself, hanging around your aunt’s cottage.”
Her relief died. “Well, actually—”
“Hi, sweetheart.” Aleksy’s warm, rough voice broke into her explanation. His warm, heavy arm wrapped around her shoulders. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
And before she could get her mind or her tongue working, before she could react or protest or prepare, he bent his dark head and kissed her full on the mouth.
Chapter 3
