Page 20 of Overkill

“I helped Whitlaw with the body. I eavesdropped a bit and found out what’s going on.” He dropped his hands and stuffed them into his jeans pocket. Nice and restrained. Not ready to reach out and touch me. Safe. Not the kind of man who couldn’t restrain himself from hurting the woman he desired. He didn’t take what wasn’t given. “I wanted…to see if you needed anything. I can ask Mamma Mack to make you a meal. I can go get groceries. Help you with the dent in your car?”

He flicked his thumb to my yellow Ram 1500. There was a big, vertical dent on the passenger door that I’d slapped a Wile E. Coyote sticker on it and made it a feature instead of a flaw.

“Don’t touch my dent.” I almost pouted.

“You’re right. It gives it character.” He leaned his forearm on the door jamb, thumb flicking at his lower lip. He smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back.

Chapter 7

Thank You for the Galaxy

Vedder

The house was…pristine. At least for what it was. The floorboards squeaked under my weight, and there were the nicks and scrapes of a house well-lived in.

The entire place smelled like her.

Like tea leaves and lavender with the clean scent of disinfectant wipes. Like a home. The cows outside were mooing as they walked the grassy little enclosure, their noses down, their coats pretty damn clean. I wondered what she did to take care of them.

“How are you, darlin’?” I leaned on the doorjamb, not quite walking in, but not stepping out to let her slam the door in my face, either.

“I’m okay.” She swallowed.

I’d noticed it was one of her tells. Like she was literally swallowing something she didn’t want to spill from her mouth.

“Are you?” I asked. She wasn’t.

“I have to be.”

At least that was an honest answer.

She was casually dressed. Jeans, a buffalo plaid shirt with pockets, hair that looked air-dried and quickly brushed out. Not a stitch of makeup on her red-rimmed eyes. Bare feet. Cute little toes.

Domestic in the best possible way. A woman who made a house a home. The kind of person who turned an ordinary holiday into a memory.

“Not around me, you don’t.” I reached out and tucked a lock of her wavy black hair behind her ear, letting my index finger graze her skin. She blushed. I liked it.

My perverse mind didn’t take long to go from wanting to see her blush with compliments to wanting to watch her flush with pleasure.

And that was creepy. Really creepy. So I dropped my hand and put the space back between us.

“I have to go identify the body tomorrow.”

That’s right, sweetheart. Tell me what’s going on.

“I’ll drive you.”

“You…what?”

“You’re going through something here. It’s hard, no matter what your relationship with the old man might have been. Let me be your chauffeur. We don’t need to talk, but…I don’t want you to drive distracted.” It didn’t take long to know that my little bird was alone in this world. She had her siblings, but they weren’t with her. They depended on her. “You don’t need to go through that alone.”

She scoffed. “I go through everything alone.”

“You don’t have to.” I’m standing right here. Use me. Let me be useful to you.

“Yes, I do.”

It was a slap in the face. A rejection of me and what I offered.