Читать книгу Mouth To Mouth - Erin McCarthy - Страница 8

He was starting to fixate on Laurel Wilkins.

A little poking, a little prodding, and Laurel’s address had fallen into his hands. One drive-by, and Trevor decided it had been a mistake to stand her up. But his excuse and apology appeared to have been accepted, and they were back to chatting casually again. It hadn’t been his intention to keep in touch with her or to reply to her suggestion that they meet again.

But a couple of days later and three more compulsive drives past her mini-mansion, Trevor hadn’t been able to resist e-mailing her again. Charming, cajoling, I promise I’ll be there this time, yes, definitely, let’s meet. You pick the time and place.

She hadn’t responded yet, and Trevor was feeling unusually impatient.

Even after he moved in with Jill on Saturday, he couldn’t get Laurel out of his mind. He’d bet his Cayman Island bank account that house was worth seven hundred thousand. Which meant there could be much, much more to be had in assets.

Trevor stamped his cigarette out in the metal ashtray on Jill’s faux oak coffee table. The room was cold, the windows drafty, and Jill stingy with the thermostat. She was cooking dinner for him in the tiny kitchen, slapping pots around and swearing under her breath at regular intervals. Burnt spaghetti sauce smell hovered in the air, clogging his nostrils.

He was better than this. He deserved more than this.

A million bucks in his pocket, he could leave this frozen city and lounge around Florida, take some time off. Buy some new clothes, a flat-screen TV. Quit living out of his car when he was between girlfriends.

Trevor stood up, reached for his jacket.

It was time to get to know Laurel Wilkins even better.

“Jill, honey, I’m going out for cigarettes. You need anything?”

“Get out of the car.”

Russ stared at Jerry as his partner about fell into his lap trying to pull the latch on the passenger door, opening it. “What the hell is your problem? Get off of me.”

“Get out.” Jerry reached toward his thigh.

Knocking Jerry’s hand away, Russ shifted toward the door, a little unnerved. “Anders, touch me and I’ll be forced to hit you.”

Jerry snorted and unlocked Russ’s seat belt. “You can only wish I’d cop a feel off you. Now get out of the car before I shove your dumb ass in the snow.”

Russ was clueless as to what the hell was going on. He’d just been staring out the window minding his own business, listening to Anders yap on and on about the hard time his girlfriend had given him over going to a bachelor party, when suddenly he was being tossed out of the damn car. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“You’re making me crazy, that’s what. Every day you make me drive by Blondie’s house three, four times while you stare out the window, drooling. Get out of the car, knock on the door, ask her out. Get yourself laid, before I smack the shit out of you.”

Jerry was giving him a stern look, his jaw set. He’d forgotten to shave, thick black whiskers spattered across his chin and upper lip, and his eyes were bloodshot, the result of the contentious bachelor party. Jerry was the sort of guy who was neither good-looking nor ugly, just a decent build, no major flaws, and a sense of humor that drew your attention away from the thinning hairline.

“You’re kidding, right? You don’t really expect me to go knock on her door.” Though the idea had stolen over him repeatedly during the past few days. He was having trouble shaking it. It stuck to him, like lint.

It had occurred to him, once the altruistic determination had worn off, that he couldn’t exactly just stroll up to Laurel and announce that she was going to have sex with him, and it would be for her own good, damn it.

“Yes, I do. It will save us a trip to the ER.”

Russ snorted. “Yeah, when they have to revive you when I beat your ass.”

“I could take you.”

“Bullshit.” Russ looked at Laurel’s brick house again, poised silently, staring down at him like a rich grandfather. Who disapproved of a cop wanting to put the moves on Laurel. He couldn’t tell if her car was in the driveway or not, and he wondered where she worked, what she did with herself.

“See? You’re doing it again, mooning over her with that sappy look on your face. What are you waiting for? Afraid she’ll turn you down? That is a legitimate concern, since this is you we’re talking about.”

“Bite me,” Russ answered, although he wasn’t putting his heart into the mock fight. He did want to knock on Laurel’s door. He wanted to assure himself that she was all right. That she hadn’t run out and done something stupid like hook up with a guy she didn’t know.

And he wanted to talk to her, get to know her, tease her, make her laugh a little. He wanted to tug on her pink scarf, pull her over to him, give her a soft kiss.

Oh, Christ, he was mooning. He was so unfamiliar with it, he hadn’t recognized the symptoms. Annoyed, he opened the door a crack and biting air whistled in, freezing the sappiness right out of him.

“I’m just concerned about her, that’s all. She’s very trusting.”

“How brotherly of you.” Jerry shook his head. “Get out of the car, Evans. Jesus H. Christ. I never took you for such a wuss.”

He was being a wuss. Damn, that pissed him off. He was dancing around the truth of what was going on like a running back dodging a defensive lineman.

What he really wanted was Laurel safe…while naked in his bed.

“Shit, I’m going.” He stepped out of the car into the street.

“I’m hitting Burger King. I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Anders!” Russ tried to grab the door, but Jerry was already accelerating, leaving him standing on the curb feeling like a dumb ass.

When he trudged to the front door and rapped on it with his knuckles, he winced at his own stupidity. For hell’s sake, Laurel was deaf. She couldn’t hear him knocking. Which meant he was going to be standing on the doorstep for an hour until Anders came back reeking like a Whopper extra value meal.

Running his fingers over the door knocker, Russ took in the engraving. The Wilkins, 1957. He felt like The Idiot, 2005.

He rang the doorbell three times in quick succession, thinking maybe Laurel’s mother was home. Turning to observe the quiet neighborhood, he considered banging on the house next door and asking to borrow the phone. His cell phone was sitting on the seat in Anders’s truck, the bastard. Nothing stirred, no sign of life anywhere behind expensive drapes hanging in multipaned windows. He could feel the wind racing off the frozen lake, slapping him in the face.

This was what he got for getting involved with a woman. Cold.

That should tell him something. Run for his life before he let every body part but his brain rush him into trouble with Laurel. The door behind him swung open. He turned, prepared to deal with Mrs. Wilkins and explain how he meant no harm to her daughter and was going to save her from selfish bastards who only wanted one thing by taking that one thing for himself.

Instead, he saw Laurel.

She was wearing jeans that sat low on her hips and another body-hugging sweater, this one red. It was advertising, plain and simple. The clothes told a man that underneath there was a curvy and delicious body, which only went and proved his point. She was totally naive if she could put on that tight, teasing outfit and not know that it screamed sex to a guy.

It sure in the hell was screaming to him. Take me, Russ.

“Russ.” She smiled, did that little tongue thing, licking her bottom lip, baby blues peeking up from under her long lashes.

Man, oh man, oh man, he was dead. There was no way he could let another guy touch her, take advantage of her generosity and innocence. He hadn’t wanted to get involved, had enough bullshit in his life to fertilize a field, but how could he let Laurel run off buying trouble?

It sucked to have a conscience.

And hormones.

But if Laurel wanted an affair, he was just going to have to charm her into wanting it with him.

“I tried to call you at work, but you don’t have TTY access. I called the main number at the station and asked to be put in contact with you, but all it did was give me your voice mail, I think.”

“I’m sorry.” Jesus, what an ass he was. He’d given his phone number to a deaf woman. Clearly he hadn’t reached detective by his intelligence alone. “Why were you calling?”

Maybe charming her naked wasn’t going to be so difficult, if she had been looking for him.

“He e-mailed me. Dean.” Laurel reached out, her voice excited, and took his hand, pulling him towards her. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

“By the way,” she added over her shoulder before he could recover from the bizarre yet intriguing sensation of holding hands, “cute shot of you in the police academy on the PD’s Web site.”

Peeling his eyes off her ass, Russ stomped his feet on the beige rug just inside the door. “I want to have sex with you,” he told her back. “Touch you until you squirm with pleasure.”

Laurel’s head shot around. “What did you say?”

Oh, shit. He had never actually verified how much or how little Laurel could hear. He strove for nonchalance, shrugging his shoulders. “What makes you think I said anything?”

She shook her head, looking puzzled. “I don’t know. I could feel it, sense it.”

He relaxed a little. “Do you hear anything? Like could you hear the doorbell?”

“I can hear airplanes taking off and thunder when I wear my hearing aid, but that’s about it. But I have a light that flashes to let me know there’s someone at the door.”

Russ followed Laurel up a winding staircase, feeling the rich, smooth mahogany wood beneath his hand. He shamelessly gawked as he looked around the entryway, which was as big as his living room. Bigger. Hell, this hallway alone had three sofas in it, and he only had room for a love seat in his place.

Houses like this made him nervous, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, afraid to touch anything and leave poor-person fingerprints on them. But he did crane his neck around, checking out the details. The ornate woodwork around the doorways, the crown molding, the massive leaded glass window halfway up the staircase. Added together, the furniture probably cost two years’ worth of his cop salary. Yet he had to admit it wasn’t ridiculous, overbearing, or Hollywood over-the-top. It was just simple good taste, expensive things in an expensive home.

There were houses like this all up and down the road, all over the lakefront, and these people weren’t on the Forbes list, or considered filthy rich. They were what his mother would have called well-off. His father would have called them lucky bastards.

And they were still a world away from him and his two-bedroom bungalow with the fixer-upper metal cabinet kitchen that he hadn’t quite gotten around to doing anything with yet.

Laurel turned, went down a hall past a half-dozen doors. Turned again, went up more stairs. Good thing he’d eaten his Wheaties for breakfast.

She paused before an open doorway and smiled. “My computer’s in here.”

“That’s quite a hike,” he told her.

“I guess we could have taken the elevator,” she said.

Russ laughed.

But she added, “We never use it, so I didn’t think about it.”

“You have an elevator?” Was she serious?

With a nod she pointed down the hall, and damned if he didn’t see a black wrought-iron gate for an elevator. “This house has some crazy stuff. It’s a Clarence Mack.”

He guessed the name was supposed to mean something to him, but it went over his head.

“He was a local architect who designed luxury homes for the new upper middle class in the twenties. The original owners were bankers and I guess out to prove they had arrived. They put a ton of upgrades in.”

“Well, it does have three floors. I guess I can see the practicality of an elevator.” If you were a lazy slob.

“Except the third floor was for servants, who wouldn’t have used the elevator. Now the third floor is for me. This is my room.”

Russ could have sworn a hush fell over the house as he stepped over the threshold.