Voyeur - Lacey Alexander [39]
“And all this has what to do with me showing up here?” Braden asked. Shocked as he’d been by Tommy’s confession, he’d been waiting to get to that particular point for the whole lift ride, which was nearing an end. The lift chair was fast approaching the departure point at the top of the hill.
“Well, it’s none of my business, but . . . I guess I’m just thinking more about girls’ feelings than I used to. And it seems pretty presumptuous to just show up unannounced when she came here for privacy. I mean, for Christ’s sake, what did she do when she saw you?”
“She fucked my brains out,” Braden said smoothly as he stood from the moving chair to glide down the exit ramp, ready for the next run.
Part of Laura wanted to kill herself for letting him go. She’d had him here, in bed with her, naked—the most physically perfect man she’d ever known—and she’d sent him away because she had a book to write? On the other hand, though, she couldn’t be sorry, because the day flew by as quickly as her fingers over the keyboard, Riley and Sloane’s story spilling out of her at record speed. She barely even had to think—the words simply flowed, as if they’d been trapped in a big bucket somewhere inside her and it had finally tipped over.
As she’d suspected, Sloane was now a major part of the story. Riley remained completely in lust with him, but she still wasn’t sure how much she trusted him. He was flirtatious and arrogant and thought he was God’s gift to the world of private eyes—but when Riley and Sloane put their heads together, things started to happen.
The whole question of why someone would steal a valuable antique broach only to hide it in a toolshed lingered. But working together, the two had hit upon an idea: if someone had hidden the broach on the property, perhaps other missing items might be hidden there, too. For instance, just last week, they discovered, Mr. Dorchester had lost a dividend check before he could take it to the bank. A rare first edition of A Farewell to Arms, signed by Hemingway himself, had disappeared from the library, too. The Dorchesters hadn’t mentioned either until Riley and Sloane had started prodding them—both Mr. and Mrs. D. had assumed they were just getting a little forgetful and had misplaced them. But now Riley and Sloane had set off on a treasure hunt of sorts. If they could turn up the other missing items, perhaps the pieces of the puzzle would begin to come together.
And, of course, he’d kissed her again, too.
She’d been climbing up on a step ladder, back searching the toolshed, checking the top of a large old wooden cabinet. Sloane’s hands had come warm at her hips, steadying her.
Riley feared there could have been a rattlesnake curled up atop the old armoire and she wouldn’t have seen it—because all she could concentrate on at the moment were the two warm palms bracketing her hips. She’d been touched by other men before, but Sloane Bennett seemed to have an unusual hold on her—both literally and figuratively. She tried to tell herself it was simply because he’d kissed her before they’d even been introduced, that such powerful chemistry had been inevitable. Yet the explanation did nothing to dim her rather feral attraction to him.
“Anything up there?” he asked.
Focus. She saw some rusted pieces of steel that had probably once been attached to a cart or wagon, and a coiled garden hose.The hose seemed a likely hiding place, so she reached into the center, where she couldn’t see, to feel around.
Something scurried across her fingertips! She screamed and leapt into the air.
She landed in Sloane Bennett’s capable arms, her heart beating too fast as she peered up into his deep brown eyes. “Spider,” she said on a quivery breath. “Or at least it felt like one.”
“I’ve never heard of a detective afraid of a little bitty spider, Riley.”
“Who said it was little?” she whispered, nearly breathless from being so close to