Jace parked the ute outside the hardware store, told Tobias, “Stay,” and got a pained look, as if the dog were saying, What do you take me for?
“You’re right,” Jace said. “You’re more disciplined than I am, mate.” Tobias wasn’t the one who’d come home that morning, taken a too-long shower, and then spent half an hour trimming his beard and shaving around the edges until his face stopped saying “possible Unabomber” and approached “fashionable scruff.” Not to mention the rest of the trimming he’d done, for which there was absolutely no reason except that you wanted a woman’s hands on your body. Or that you wanted yours on her. Or both.
Afterwards, he’d swept the black hair back from his face, grimaced in the mirror at the lines carved by too much sun and too much time, and muttered aloud, “You’re old, mate. And if you get into anything more exciting than handbags at dawn, this hair’s going to blind you.” Which was why he’d stopped at the Mane Event, after lunch at the usual café served by the usual waitress, and booked an appointment for Tuesday.
Changing it up would be good. Readiness was a state of mind, and so was too much routine. The wrong state of mind.
That was also why he drove toward the gym afterward but didn’t make it all the way there. Not because the spot he pulled into was a couple shopfronts up from Sinful Desires. He parked there because of that too-much-routine issue. He needed to start walking through town, taking note of his surroundings, who he saw and how they looked at him, in the way that kept you alive.
It wasn’t the total population that mattered. It was the percentage of it that wanted to kill you. Some woman was writing down her fantasies about attacking him, and worse, she was sending them to him from Montana. Time to face that and check to see if she were actually much closer than Missoula. He was going to have to read the signals, because he doubted she’d be holding a sign.
There may have been something else to his parking spot, though, because when he passed the shop with the white-painted, gilt-edged sign swinging on its chains beneath a pink awning, he glanced casually inside, and not because he was interested in black stockings and filmy underthings. Although, as it happened, they did manage to hold his interest, especially when he put his imagination to work.
But as for the primary purpose of the exercise? He saw a few middle-aged ladies inside, but not a single goatherd.
Lily. She didn’t look like a Lily. Or she did, but she didn’t act like one. Or she did, but only sometimes. When she smiled, she was a Lily. When she was swearing at goats or talking about touching his tattoo, she looked like somebody more interesting. He’d clearly judged her too quickly before, or not been observant enough. In any case, he wanted to see more of that somebody. He might stop by the shop later to check on her hand.
But first, the gym. You always went into the skirmish prepared, even if that just meant with your muscles pumped, and possibly dressed in jeans instead of workout shorts that had seen better days. He made it to The Sinful Body without spotting any potential assassins, headed to the desk, and handed his card to Charlotte.
“Hi,” he said, and smiled at her.
“Hi yourself,” she said, which was unusually perky of her. She handed him a towel and said, “You trimmed your beard.”
“I did.” He ran his hand over his jaw. “What do you think? Better?”
“Hmm. I can’t decide.” She put her head on one side and said, “The mountain man look was nice, too.”
“Seems to be trending,” he agreed. “Not sure if that’s a good thing.”
She laughed. “Means you can’t lose. One way or another, you’re covered.”
She’d blushed, as usual, but she seemed to have gained some confidence, which was always a positive. Or maybe he seemed more focused. Less distant. He grinned at her and said, “Yeah? Good to know,” headed to the locker room to drop his bag, wondered why Lily’s hot-and-cold approach was sexier than pure interest, and decided not to think about what that said about him. He knew already. The need to pursue. He was an unevolved bastard.
He stepped out of the locker room and stopped.
There she was. Lily. How had he missed her before? She was facing away from him, but still. But definitely. Her hair was pulled back into two short braids, and she was wearing black stretch capris that were cut below her navel and a pink crop top that was cut above her navel. Which left heaps for him to look at.
She wasn’t one bit brunette, she wasn’t overly tall, and she definitely wasn’t willowy. And he couldn’t look away.
He’d never seen her in here, and she wasn’t doing any of the things you’d expect. Spinning class. Zumba, whatever Zumba was. Any of those things with music. She was holding a pair of dumbbells—an unmatched pair, the right one noticeably smaller than the left—and doing lunges. When he walked closer and got a better look, her face had a twist to it that said those lunges were a major effort. She switched so her right leg was in back, and the twist became a grimace. And she still didn’t notice him.
He recognized the other jarring note only when he was halfway across the floor toward her. She wasn’t wearing earphones. Usually, a good-looking woman listened to music as she worked out.
He stopped where he was. Think. Why was that? Probably something to do with discouraging random blokes from disturbing them when all they were doing was trying to get in a gym session.
However much Lily was struggling, and however good she looked in that gear, that was what she was doing. A workout. She’d liked his help with the goats, and she’d liked that he hadn’t chatted her up too much while he’d done it. She’d liked his restraint, the same way he’d liked hers. And she wouldn’t like this.
He hated when he was sensitive. He sighed, veered away, climbed onto a rowing machine, adjusted the seat to accommodate his legs, and flipped the resistance to high.
Kelli popped up before he’d made it through two minutes, and he felt a flash of irritation that told him he’d guessed right about Lily.
“What’s on the program for today?” the trainer asked. She didn’t mention his beard. She was wearing a crop top and capris herself, both of them in black, and she absolutely was willowy, tall, and brunette. “How can I help?”
“I’m all good,” he said. “Lower body today.” He glanced at Lily without intending to. She’d moved on to goblet squats, clutching a single weight in her hands and… well, doing squats. A quick glance around told him that even at an off time like this, more than one bloke was watching her do them, and he wanted to tell them to… what?
He knew what. He looked back at Kelli, but she’d followed his gaze. “Well, not like that, I hope,” she said with a laugh. “I hope you’re lifting something a little heavier. Women who don’t work out for three months and then think they’ll get results in one day, and using five-pound weights?”
He didn’t say anything, just kept rowing, and after a minute, she glanced at him sidelong and said, “You think that’s too honest. But helping somebody who’s worked hard to get himself in shape and keep himself there is a whole lot more satisfying than what I usually end up doing, which is to help somebody set up a program they won’t follow. Trainers are attracted to self-discipline. It’s why we got into it, after all. But I shouldn’t say it, you’re thinking.”
“No,” he said. “But we all have our moments.”
“Right,” she said. “If you’re all good, then, I’ll go earn my money helping people set up programs they won’t follow.”
Which was all fine. He watched her stop to talk to Lily, watched Lily shake her off, and thought something like, I knew you had it in you. Which was an odd reaction. Getting training from an expert was a good thing. Training was how you improved, how you kept yourself from getting complacent. Was it actually that he didn’t want anybody, male or female, talking to Lily?
He needed a trip to the pub, that was what it was. An evening at the Glacier Point Bar & Grill, leaning against the mahogany bar with a foot on the rail and a bottle in his hand, buying a pretty girl a drink or two and seeing what she thought of his accent. Flirting, and maybe more. Moving on. He’d thought he’d never be ready again, but clearly, he was.
He should do that, yeah. He kept rowing, watched Lily rack her weights like she knew what she was doing, no matter what Kelli had said, then stretch out without a bit of self-consciousness, palms on the floor, knees pedaling, and glorious bum in the air. After that, he watched as she stood, turned, and her eyes met his.
And then he watched her turn and leave.
Well, bugger.
You are not here to get laid. Maybe if Paige said it ten times fast, she’d believe it.
You are Lily. That one made it through. She took a quick shower, did the bare minimum on the makeup, changed back into the too-fancy dress, spent ten more minutes getting an agonizingly-slowly-prepared smoothie from the juice bar, and headed back to the shop drinking it. She’d still be hungry, but the whole day had rattled her enough that she’d needed to spend her lunch hour—which wasn’t actually an hour—in territory more familiar.
When she stepped back into the store, she found a man there. And not the man she’d been thinking about.
Shopping for the trophy wife, she thought immediately, then checked in with her impressions to see why. It wasn’t that the wife was there. Hailey was at the other side of the store helping a lean, anxious-looking woman pick out underwear, and that woman wasn’t this man’s wife, girlfriend, or anything else.
Why? Because he’d never have an anxious-looking wife. The body language said relaxed. It said rich. It said never got into a situation I couldn’t handle.
She kind of hated him already.
He turned, looked at her, smiled, and lifted the item on its hanger without a bit of self-consciousness. One of the camisole-and-boy-thong combos she’d been tagging earlier, which Hailey must have put on display. The white version.
“I always like white best,” he said conversationally. “What does that say about me, do you think?”
He had some white himself. Silver, to be exact, at the temples of his perfectly cut dark hair. He wasn’t quite dressed for Sinful, either. No plaid, no camo, and no denim. He was wearing black dress trousers that, even without a Lily-eye, Paige could guess had cost some money, and a white-on-white striped dress shirt that ditto. No tie, but only because he was too stylish for a tie. She’d bet he had a black jacket in his car, and that he’d spent more on the whole outfit than she had on her spa vacation. Including all the waxing.
He hung the lingerie up again before turning toward her again, and she checked his pockets out of habit. Wallet in the back and nothing else, or it would have been obvious. “Dockers” wasn’t a word that had ever crossed this guy’s lips, and neither had “a little more room in the seat and thigh.”
She eyed him, eyed Hailey, still talking to her customer, and said, “I don’t know. What do you think?” Which sounded hostile, but she felt hostile.
“That I prefer my romance on the innocent side?” he said, then laughed, and she bristled. He must have seen it, because he said, “That sounded terrible. That I like to ease into it, maybe. That a little shyness can be sexy.”
“Spoken like every man with an eye for an eighteen-year-old,” she said, and saw his eyes widen. Way too bitchy, and something Lily would never have said, but she couldn’t quite manage “Lily” at this moment.
He put up a hand palm-out and smiled, a rueful thing with too much good humor in it. “I come in peace. I guess there’s no way to talk about lingerie preferences without sounding at least a little creepy, so let’s just say I was waiting for you and passing the time by looking around. Would it help if I bought something?”
“Probably not,” she said, tossing her bag behind the counter and stashing the half-drunk smoothie. “It would help if you told me why you were waiting for me, though.” She was winging it here. Why hadn’t Lily told her how many good-looking men she had hanging around? Probably because that was Lily’s life story, so she hadn’t thought to mention it. It was seriously disconcerting Paige.
It wasn’t that there weren’t any good-looking cops on the SFPD. It was just that you were more likely to see them eating a taco than looking suave.
Her new buddy said, “Same old thing, I’m afraid. Still hoping to get under your defenses. You’ve given me another week to think about how. Always dangerous.”
The lean woman was approaching from the back of the store with Hailey behind her. Hailey was looking a little apprehensive as the woman stopped in front of Paige and asked, “Does this mean you’ve finally decided to sign?”
“Excuse me?” Paige asked. “And no, it doesn’t. I won’t be signing.” She took a step back, keeping her hands up where she could use them. She saw “threat,” however unlikely a source it was coming from. But this was also her chance to draw Lily’s line in the sand, and to take the consequences.
“I don’t understand what your problem is,” the woman said, one step too close to Paige’s face and nowhere close to buying the underwear she had in a death grip, “or why you won’t explain it. Why you won’t listen. Don’t you realize that you’re holding this whole town hostage? You’ve been here, what? Two years? Maybe? Some of us were born here. Some of us need this. You’re getting a good deal. Everybody knows that, and we can see that you don’t even need the money, either. You could live anywhere you want. We can’t. So why won’t you help?”
“Whoa,” Mr. Silver Fox said. “Ms. Hollander isn’t obligated.”
The woman rounded on him. “Then why are you here?”
He smiled. Too charming again. “Well, you know, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
“Meaning,” Paige said, her suspicions confirmed, “what? Are we moving on from bribery? What could possibly come next?” This had to be Brett Hunter. Behind her, a trio of teenaged girls whirled into the store like a tropical storm, all long legs, long hair, and chattering voices, and she thought, What is this, the candy store?
“That sounds so sordid, though,” Hunter said with barely a glance for the girls. He was still so casual, still so amused, and Paige’s hackles were rising even more. “I’m here because I wanted to invite you out to look at a parcel. I think you’re going to love it. It’s a little remote, a little lakeside, and a whole lot charming. I saw it and thought, now, who would go for this? And I had my answer.”
Paige wasn’t listening, for two reasons. One, that the thin woman was all but bouncing up and down on her toes. Too intense, too focused. Two, that the Milker had just stepped into the shop with a jingle of bells, bringing all his calm certainty with him, as if he walked in a cone of stillness. And three, that the teenage girls had drifted apart, and one of them had dropped her purse. The contents spilled out onto the floor and scattered, the girl shrieked, and everybody looked.
Paige stepped back, and then she stepped back again. She ignored the girl on the floor, both men, and everybody else. A quick pivot to the left, and she was saying to the blonde girl standing next to the Natori rack, “Excuse me, miss. Would you please open your bag and show me what’s inside?”
She got wide blue eyes, a lipsticked mouth in a perfect O, and a white-knuckled hand on a slouchy leather tote. Innocent and shocked from her face, and the opposite from her body. “What?”
Paige took a step closer and beckoned. “Right now, please.” The girl’s eyes slid away, and Paige said, “I said now.”
A long moment. Silence. A shuffle of feet from the girl, as if she wanted to run. And then, as Paige continued to hold her gaze, an achingly slow movement of her hand toward her bag. Until she stopped.
“That’s right,” Paige said. “Now.”
The girl thrust the bag open in one quick movement and said, all in a rush, “I was going to buy them. I was just about to. You didn’t give me a chance.”
Paige kept her voice level. “Would you give them to me, then, please? We can ring them up for you.” The girl, sullen now, handed over the teal-colored bra and thong, and Paige glanced at the tags. A hundred dollars’ worth of distraction, and a coordinated effort with her friend. Some girls needed better hobbies. Unless this girl had shoplifted all her clothes, she could afford to pay. Paige said, “Thank you,” and handed the garments to Hailey, who took them without a word. “Would you like to purchase these now, or have you changed your mind?”
“We weren’t even out of the store,” the blonde said. “You can’t do that. I’ll tell my dad you accused me and humiliated me in front of everybody for no reason. Just because we’re teenagers.”
“Sounds like you’ve read up on your petty larceny statutes,” Paige said pleasantly. “Could be you’re right. Maybe you’d like me to call the police, and we can see what they say.”
“I didn’t do anything,” the brunette who’d dropped her purse was saying now. “I didn’t take anything. It wasn’t even my idea!”
“Chelsea. Shut up,” the blonde said, and Chelsea did.
The third girl, the bystander, was all but wringing her hands. Paige went behind the counter, picked up the phone, and said, “What would you like to do?”
“We’re going,” the blonde said. “I would’ve bought something, but forget it. You don’t have any right to keep us here, and I wouldn’t buy anything from you now anyway. You rip people off, and everybody knows it. You can buy everything in here a whole lot cheaper online.”
“Fine,” Paige said. “Then you won’t be upset that all of you are banned from the store from now on.”
If it weren’t for Brett Hunter, Paige was pretty sure, she would have been hearing a whole lot about that. Instead, the blonde glanced around, then muttered, “Fuck you,” almost but not quite under her breath. Like saying it got her last-word points, but also like it didn’t count against her with a good-looking man if she didn’t scream it. When Paige didn’t react, because it wasn’t the first time she’d heard it, or the thousandth time, for that matter, the girl tossed her hair, said, “Come on, you guys. We’re leaving,” and marched for the door.
That was when Paige registered that the Milker was still standing in front of it, arms folded, six foot three and two hundred pounds of not-moving. For a long moment, it was a standoff. Then he stepped aside, held the door for the girls, and let it swing shut behind them.
“What were you going to do if they’d run for it?” Paige asked him. She had some adrenaline, she realized with wonder. For something this minor? Like a rookie, like somebody who’d been out of it for way more than a few weeks. Like she truly was in Lily’s body.
Oh. Lily would have been upset. The adrenaline was good, then. Part of the twin-meld.
She got another of the almost-smiles the Milker specialized in. “I’d have thought of something.”
“I’ll bet.”
Hailey said, “Well,” and looked like she wanted to say more. “How did you know? I’d never have suspected Madison Knightley. Heaven knows she doesn’t need to shoplift.”
Paige didn’t answer, because she couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t some form of, “Because I’m a cop.” The silence stretched out until Hailey said, “I’m surprised you didn’t wait until she was outside so we could have held her for the police, though.”
Paige asked, “What would be the point?”
Hunter said, “Interesting. If she doesn’t have a record, if her lawyer daddy pays for what she stole, and if the police can’t do anything next time either, because she doesn’t have that record? Is that better?”
“The cops pick their battles,” Paige said. “She’s not worth it.”
“Why not?”
It was low. Quiet. From the Milker. And it wasn’t a challenge. It was a question. Paige said, “That much entitlement isn’t going anywhere. Not when it’s been grown at home, which I’ll bet it has. She doesn’t matter. What matters are the two girls with her. Or maybe one and a half of them.”
“The one who was upset,” the Milker said.
“And possibly the girl who dropped her purse. Maybe. If they’re ready to learn something, they may have done it today. Meanwhile, I saved us some time and trouble, I saved the cops more, and I got the clothes back. What’s not to like?”
“Interesting,” Hunter said. “Pragmatic.” And Paige realized that Lily would’ve handled this completely differently. Would’ve hugged Sad Girl, probably, which might have worked and might not have. Sad Girl needed her eyes opened while she could still distance herself. Which was now.
And if it hadn’t been a good Lily-imitation in front of Hunter? If he thought Lily was tougher than he’d imagined, more—yes, pragmatic? That wasn’t a bad thing at all. This was all getting pretty subtle for Paige, though. She was better at action than the after-action report.
While she was still trying to work it out, Hunter said, “I’ll come by tomorrow, shall I, and we can talk again while you’re not so busy.”
“You can do whatever you want,” Paige said, offering up some more of the new, tough Lily. “It’s a free country, and I haven’t banned you. Yet. But my answer will still be the same.”
“Ah,” Hunter said, “but you haven’t seen my parcel. It might be worth a look.” He pulled a slim black wallet out of his back pocket, extracted a white business card, and dropped it on the counter. “In case you’ve forgotten my number,” he said with a faint smile. “Heartbreaking as the thought is. Nice to see you, as always, Hailey,” he added, and then he, too, was at the door, stiffening just a bit as he passed the Milker.
Paige didn’t need a degree in Man to figure out that body language, either. That was pure circling-male-dog. And unless she was very much mistaken, it was about her. At least on the Milker’s part. She couldn’t tell about Hunter.