No answer.
However, this wasn’t the first time I’d knocked on Lionel’s door. No answer meant no one was in the house. The barn was another story.
Fingers crossed, I peered around the house. The barn was ablaze with light.
Eureka!
Legs trembling, I hurried down the path to the large white structure while shooting nervous looks over my shoulder. I was pretty sure the big scary dude hadn’t followed me. Still, the crunch of the gravel beneath my gym shoes jangled my nerves.
After one last “I hope nobody is there” look back toward the house, I walked through the barn doors. The smell of hay and animals filled the air. A horse nickered from a stall.
No Lionel.
The sound of hay crunching under foot made my neck prickle. Slowly, I turned toward the sound to my right and squinted into the darkened corner of the barn, waiting for something scary to jump out at me. The minute the source of the sound came into the light, I began to laugh.
Trotting toward me, wearing a faded Chicago Cubs baseball cap, was Elwood, an ex-circus camel and current resident of Château Lionel. Elwood moseyed up to me and blew warm air in my face. All feelings of fear were pushed to the side for a moment. No one could remain terror-struck in the presence of a hat-wearing camel begging for attention. Besides, not long ago this camel had saved my life. If I wasn’t safe here, I wasn’t safe anywhere.
My hands patted Elwood’s neck, making him grunt with happiness. He butted his head against my shoulder, and I scratched his face, careful not to dislodge his hat. Elwood needed a hat or he wasn’t happy. Unhappy camels spit. I had enough problems without adding camel saliva to the mix.
I straightened Elwood’s baseball cap and smiled. During his life with the circus, Elwood was the animal half of a clown/camel Blues Brothers act. When the clown died, Elwood became depressed and stopped eating. While passing through town, one of the animal keepers brought Elwood to Lionel for medical attention. Elwood liked Lionel and never left.
Since coming back to town, I’d been trying to figure out a way to adopt Elwood. However, something told me neither Elwood nor any Chicago landlord would be happy with the situation. My loss.
A muffled noise from far back in the barn made me jump a little. I looked at Elwood, who was rolling his eyes in delight. If he wasn’t concerned, that could only mean one thing.
Lionel.
Escorted by the camel, I made my way to the other end of the barn. I walked through the back hallway into Lionel’s favorite hangout—the poker room. The wood-paneled room had beige carpeting, in the center of which were a large round poker table and chairs. There was also a television and a large leather sofa. To make the place self-sufficient, Lionel had added a microwave and a refrigerator.
It was in the refrigerator that I found my favorite veterinarian. His head and upper body were obstructed by the fridge door. His butt was in plain sight, and I leaned against the doorjamb to admire it. Eleanor might be onto something, I thought.
Elwood nuzzled my shoulder. I gave him a small pat. When I didn’t offer him food or any more scratches, the camel trotted back down the hallway in search of something more interesting.
The man attached to the butt emerged from the fridge wielding a beer. He ran a hand through his wavy brown hair, popped the top, and turned. The minute he noticed me, my throat began to ache. Tears welled in my eyes. I sniffled, trying to hold back the flood that had been threatening since I left the rink.
I failed.
Lionel put down his beer and crossed the room. The tears streaking down my face came faster. Lionel reached me, and I wrapped my arms around him and held on tight as my body shook with fear, relief, and unhappiness. My eyes and throat burned. I tried to take a deep breath and almost choked. Lionel’s strong arms tightened their hold, and I sank into his chest.
I don’t know how long we stood that way. It had to have been a while, because when I finally pulled away, the right shoulder of Lionel’s green shirt was soaked. Worse yet, I was feeling more than a little embarrassed about my outburst. Redheads don’t cry well, and I’m the worst of the bunch. My eyes get puffy, my cheeks break out in red blotches, and the rest of my face turns pink and shiny. None of which is a good thing when faced with a guy who looks like he jumped off the pages of a Playgirl, Veterinarian Edition calendar.
“Sorry,” I said, bowing my head. To my horror, I began to sniffle again.
Lionel didn’t seem to notice my embarrassment or the sniffling. He just guided me to the sofa, grabbed his open beer, and handed it to me.
“I think you could use this.”
I nodded and took a sip. Alcohol was never a solution, but in this case a beer seemed like a good stopgap until I could come up with a better one.
Lionel waited in silence for me to finish half the beer before asking, “Now that you’re feeling better, tell me what your father did.”
The beer bottle stopped halfway to my mouth. “What do you mean, ‘what your father did’?”
“You were crying,” Lionel said in the same voice he used to calm nervous horses. I could tell by the flash of his eyes that he was upset. “Your father must have done something to make you cry.”
I shook my head and handed back the beer bottle. Something told me that in a minute Lionel was going to need an alcohol infusion more than I did.
“My father didn’t make me cry.” He’d made me angry. That was entirely different. “A big man lunging at me with a wire did.”
It was Lionel’s turn to look confused.
I took a deep breath. “I don’t know who the man was. I was going to my apartment and found him standing in the stairway, waiting for me.”
A muscle in Lionel’s throat twitched.
“The guy yelled at me for a while in Spanish, but I could only make out one word.”
Another twitch. “What was the word?”
I took another deep breath and braced myself for impact. “Car.”
Lionel stood up and paced the floor. His hands raked through his hair three times. I counted. One meant he was thinking. Two meant he was stalling for time. Three meant he was trying not to yell. Four told me to dive for cover.
“I don’t believe this,” Lionel said in a strangled voice as he strode back and forth across the floor. Stopping in front of me, he asked, “The car thief came to your apartment to yell at you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I was as confused as he was. “Maybe he’s the thief’s brother and is worried about my being on the case.” Yeah, right. Shrugging, I explained, “All I know is the guy said something about a car. He could have been asking about buying a car, for all I know.”
Lionel turned his green eyes on me. “And what about the wire?”
“Okay,” I admitted, “the wire was scary. One minute the guy sounded like a skater who was mad at me for losing his shoes and the next he was stretching a wire between his hands and extending it toward my throat.”
I tried to sound nonchalant, but my voice shook anyway. The wire and the guy holding it had knocked me off balance.
And Lionel knew it.
In a flash, his cell phone was in his hand. “We’re calling Sean.”
“No, not Sean,” I yelled, springing from the sofa. I grabbed Lionel’s hand and wrestled for the phone. Lionel was bigger, but I was scrappy. Too bad scrappy lost.
Panting, I watched him put the phone to his ear and say, “We have to let the cops know this guy is around. You don’t want him to scare anyone else, do you? What if Agnes ran into this guy? Or your grandfather?”
The idea of my grandfather running into the wire thug made me weak. Pop wouldn’t run. Pop thought he was Arnold Schwarzenegger and Zorro rolled into one. Pop wouldn’t stand a chance.
“All right,” I said. “You have a point.” He also had the phone held high enough to keep me from snagging it. The combination was unbeatable.
Lionel handed me the receiver. “It’s ringing.”
Great. Sean would make me feel
as if it were all my fault. I ignored the niggle at the back of my brain that said it might be. I was looking into the car theft after Sean had told me point-blank not to.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Indian Falls Sheriff’s Department.” Roxy’s overly chipper voice boomed into the receiver. “We are busy on the other line, assisting a fellow citizen. Please leave a message and we will get back to you.”
I smiled at Lionel. He had dialed the nonemergency line. Now I could do my civic duty without talking to Sean. I left a detailed message about the wire run-in and promised to check in the next morning.
I closed the phone and handed it back to Lionel. “Satisfied?”
Shoving the phone in his pocket, Lionel picked up the opened beer and chugged. When he finished, he closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. “A message is fine for now, but tomorrow morning you are going down to the Sheriff’s Department to file a report. Until then, you’re staying here.”
“Here? As in here in the barn?” The couch was pretty comfortable, and Elwood was in the next room. All in all, things could be worse.
Lionel arched an eyebrow and crooked a finger in the neckline of my T-shirt. He gave a little tug, and I took a step toward him. “Here,” he said in a low voice, “as in my house, with me.”
“Oh.” My heart gave a funny little skip as Lionel’s mouth touched mine. I sank into his arms as his lips teased and tasted, until all scary thoughts of the man with the wire disappeared.
* * *
I didn’t have to open my eyes to know that something was different. Behind my shut lids I could feel the sunlight streaming into the room. It was morning. And last night …
My eyes flew open, and I sat up in bed.
Last night, my life had been threatened. Last night, I’d stayed the whole night with Lionel in his house.
And nothing had happened.
I looked down at my clothing. Yep, I wasn’t imagining it. I was dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of Lionel’s boxer shorts. I’d slept in the house of the sexiest man alive, and I’d done it alone. I groaned, remembering the worst part. The sleeping arrangements had been my choice.
Lionel had kissed me all the way up to the house. His hands touched my shoulders, back, and arms. I unbuttoned his shirt and ran my fingers across his hard, tanned chest. He unlocked the door to the house without our lips breaking contact. Heat and desire coursed through me. My whole body tingled with excitement as we traveled up the stairs to his room. Nothing had ever felt better. I was alive and safe and ready to celebrate both.
And then my mind turned on. Maybe it was the sight of Lionel’s bed, all massive mahogany, with a deep green comforter. Bachelor decor. Or maybe it was the uncertain status of our relationship and my future in Indian Falls that made my brain hold up the stop sign. One minute I was kissing Lionel as if my life depended on it, the next I was saying, “I think I should sleep on the sofa.”
Lucky for me, Lionel had self-control and a guest room. He even lent me his toothbrush and tucked me in for the night.
What other guy would do that? I thought with pride. A second later, my pride turned to confusion.
What guy would do that? One who cared too much to push a girl into something she wasn’t ready for, or one who didn’t care enough to get upset when the girl changed her mind?
And which one did I really want it to be? My head throbbed. Thinking about my life did that.
My nose twitched as the aroma of coffee floated through the air. Coffee was somewhere downstairs. So was Lionel. I burrowed between the sheets, warring between the need for caffeine and dealing with the fallout from last night’s abstinence.
Caffeine won.
I hopped out of bed. In record time, I did the teeth-brushing thing in the bathroom and padded downstairs, pretending to be more in control of the situation than I felt. My nose led me to Lionel’s kitchen, which was in the back of the house. I braced myself for confrontation and walked through the doorway.
The kitchen was empty.
Huh. All that worrying for nothing.
Lionel was nowhere in sight. Instead, I found white cabinets against blue walls, butcher-block countertops, spotless white appliances, and a scarred wooden table with six matching chairs. All in all, the epitome of the cozy farmhouse kitchen.
Taking advantage of Lionel’s absence, I peeked in the cabinets, then in the fridge. Lots of fruits and veggies, milk that hadn’t passed the expiration date, cheese, and a couple of packages of lunch meat and other butcher delicacies. His cabinets were filled with pots, pans, and a full set of dishes. This was not the kitchen of any happily single man I’d ever dated. This was the kitchen of a man who should be married.
Eeek!
I made a beeline for the door, stopping first to set my coffee cup in the sink. My mother had taught me manners, which apparently took over when everything else flew out of control. A piece of paper on the counter caught my attention, probably because it had my name on the top. It read:
Becky, I had to go check on Bucky Davis’s mare. Hope you slept well. I’ll stop by the rink later. Love, Lionel
PS. Go to the sheriff’s office and file a report.
After making the bed and straightening up the bathroom, I was in my car and traveling back to town, doing my best not to dwell on the L word in Lionel’s note. I was pretty sure Lionel wasn’t making a romantic declaration with a Sharpie and a ripped-out page of a spiral notebook. Lionel had more class. Still, the word unnerved me.
To distract myself, I decided to follow Lionel’s instructions and tooled over to the sheriff’s office to file a report. The fact that the station was next door to the DiBelka Bakery probably added an extra incentive to do my civic duty.
Indian Falls Sheriff’s Department dispatcher and all-around nuisance Roxy Moore was seated behind the reception counter when I stepped through the glass front doors. The pink-lacquered tips of her fingers flipped though a magazine as her platinum blond head bopped to the oldies playing over the speakers. At the sound of my footsteps, she glanced up. Her onyx-lined eyes widened. Then she smiled.
“Inspector Robbins. I figured you’d wander in here. Can’t keep your nose out of police business, can you?”
“Morning, Roxy,” I said, trying to be polite. “I need to file an official report. I left a message last night about the man threatening me outside the rink.”
“Oh God, that’s right.” Roxy’s face turned the same color as her nail polish. “Sean mentioned you had called. I had to leave work early. I must have just missed your call. I don’t think I would ever have forgiven myself if something had happened to you and I hadn’t been here to get the call.”
Quickly, I walked Roxy through last night’s encounter with the psycho Spanish guy. My stomach churned as I described the moment when the man had pulled the wire out of his pocket and wrapped part of it around his hand. By the time I’d finished my story, Roxy’s face was decidedly pale under her liberally applied makeup. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I preferred the snide comments and withering looks.
Roxy lent me her magazine as she typed the report. I feigned interest in Mel Gibson’s life while she plucked keys on the computer. Sadly, Mel wasn’t interesting enough to distract my mind from exploding cars and angry thugs. So when the printer started whirring, I asked, “How’s the investigation on my dad’s car coming? Does Sean have any leads?”
One perfectly penciled eyebrow raised in my direction. “Deputy Holmes is working very hard to find the person responsible. I’m sure he’ll catch the thief any day, especially now that you’ve come in and given a description. This guy will be easy to spot in Indian Falls.”
I couldn’t deny that. But somewhere in my brain I wasn’t sure the big guy was the thief.
Roxy handed me the report. I signed it and took my copy, all the while wondering if maybe the guy had just been a witness to the crimes and was trying to share information. He struck me as the type that would avoid cops. Then again, maybe his own car had been stolen and he wanted my
help. There were too many maybes for me to swallow. Until there was some kind of evidence linking my Spanish-speaking visitor to the cars and the fire, I wasn’t about to call the case closed.
As I walked toward the front doors, a question popped into my head. “Hey,” I said with my hand on the door frame. “Do they know what type of accelerant the thief used to torch Jimmy’s car?”
I waited for Roxy to shoot me down with a snide remark. Instead, she took her seat behind the counter and said, “Gasoline. Jimmy’s car was soaked in it. So was the mannequin. Then they were both set on fire. Make sure you take care of yourself.”
Stunned, I walked into the bright sunshine. Roxy had been nice. She was never nice, especially when I poked my nose into police business. And she never gave me useful information. Either Roxy had started taking Precious’s medication or she thought my life was about to come to an end. Something told me I wasn’t lucky enough for it to be medication. My day was going downhill fast.
I walked next door to the bakery and purchased a banana nut muffin and two chocolate croissants. By the time I pulled into the rink parking lot, I had polished off one croissant and was working on the other. The flaky combination of chocolate and butter restored my sense of optimism. Besides, if someone was waiting to kill me, I could bribe them with the muffin. No one would choose blood and death over one of Mrs. DiBelka’s banana nut creations.
I drove around the parking lot, clutching the bakery bag and looking for mysterious figures lurking in the shadows. Thank goodness there weren’t any. I would live another day and get to eat the muffin. Things were looking up.
I took a peek into the stairway leading to my apartment and let out a sigh of relief. No freaky guys in sight. With the coast clear, I ran upstairs to shower and change.
I flipped on the lights and crossed through the expansive living room to the bathroom, feeling safer with every step. Sensing my mother’s presence always had that effect. After Dad left us, she and I had moved into the rink apartment and created a safe space for the two of us. Before that, we’d lived in a rambling old farmhouse with four big bedrooms and a big backyard. Come to think of it, the house was kind of like Lionel’s.