Still Lake - Anne Stuart [49]
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Marty said. “Isn’t it time you took a break? You’ve been working nonstop for hours.”
“I took a break at eleven. I’ll stop for lunch at one.”
“How do you know which side of the house is east?” she asked, suddenly curious.
“Any fool knows what’s east and what’s west,” he said with barely disguised impatience. “Is there anything I can help you with? Otherwise I need to get back to work.”
She’d been told she had a very sexy pout, so she tried it on him. “Don’t you like me?” she asked plaintively.
He looked her up and down, slowly, from her toes with their blue polish and three toe rings, up her admirably long legs, over her bare stomach and all the way up to her fuchsia-tinted hair. And then he shrugged, clearly unimpressed. “I don’t even know you. Should I?”
Marty’s sexy pout turned into a frown. “You tell me.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you I have work to do. So if you haven’t got a message from your sister or something you need me to do, I’d appreciate it if you let me get on with it.”
“Oh, I have something I want you to do,” Marty said in a soft, cooing voice.
“What is it?”
“Go to hell.”
She stalked away, majorly pissed. Trust Sophie to find the best-looking homosexual she could find in the area, just to make Marty’s life miserable. Well, there were other boys around, men as well. Marty just hadn’t made the effort. Maybe she’d hitch a ride with Doc when he went back into town. Of course, Doc gave her the creeps, but then, most old people did. Maybe she could…
“Hey.”
She was just about to turn the corner by the inn when she heard his voice. She was half tempted to keep on stalking, but curiosity got the better of her. She turned to glare at him. He was as unmoved by her anger as he’d been by her sexy pout.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
“I’ll be eating my lunch down by the lake,” he said. “At one.”
“And I care because…?”
He grinned then. Big mistake—he had the most delectable smile she’d ever seen in her entire almost eighteen years. “You tell me,” he said. And then he turned his back on her, and she could hear him whistling under his breath.
She stomped around the front of the building, in time to see Doc rise and pat Grace’s hand. “I’ll be back at five,” he was saying.
Perfect opportunity. She could get a ride into Colby with Doc, and even get a ride back out if she ever felt like returning to this epitome of boredom. It should have been an easy decision. Doc and freedom, at least for a few hours. Or meeting that smartass down by the lake where anyone could see them.
It was a no-brainer. Sophie’s new handyman was the best-looking thing she’d seen since she arrived in Colby—she doubted she’d find anyone nearly as interesting at Audley’s. If fate had decided to deliver such a hunk to her own backyard, then he was probably worth the effort.
Besides, she didn’t like Doc. It was one thing for her sister and Grace to worry about her, another to have a stranger doing it. She wasn’t part of Doc’s clientele, and what she did with her time, what she smoked, who she saw, was her business, not his. And if she rode into town with him he’d probably cross-examine her.
No, she was better off staying behind. Seeing if she could make the sourpuss smile again. And seeing if there was any way she could lure him out of sight of the big house.
The book was gone.
One of the odd twists that Grace’s illness had brought was a sudden concern with neatness. Grace had always been someone who left her clothes scattered on the floor, who had papers and scarves and paraphernalia trailing after her, who believed making a bed was a waste of time when you were just going to sleep in it again that night. In fact, Sophie hadn’t even learned to make a bed until she had gone to live with her father and Eloise in their neat home in Michigan while Grace traveled the world. There were times she thought her almost obsessive