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She looks back over her shoulder—to see if her brother is around? When she faces me again, she speaks in a reluctant whisper, forcing me to lean forward. Forcing me to count the flecks of gold in her green eyes. “I’m not very brave,” she says quietly. “I’m really sensible and I always play it safe. But I saw a dead body and I didn’t vanish into dust. I stayed calm and I called the police. I found blankets for me and Jude, gave a detailed statement to Detective Wright. I haven’t thought a lot about how I would react in a terrible situation like that, but I thought I would cry or hyperventilate or die of fright. Definitely thought I would pack up and run home. But I didn’t. I surprised myself by sticking it out. And I guess I just want to see what else I can do.” She blinks up at me, the dark fringe of her lashes seeming to sweep down and up in slow motion. “Does that make sense, bounty hunter?”
She still doesn’t know my name.
Keep it that way.
Because I’m about to ask if she, perhaps, needs a blanket now, too? So if she said my name, I would be fucking toast. Somehow I know that like I know my way around a Harley. Because I’m not going to lie, her explanation seems to have opened a trap door in my belly and all of my irritation is falling right through it. Gone. I’m mostly wondering who the hell told her she wasn’t brave. That would be a satisfying person to kill. “You aren’t backing down from my scary ass, are you?” I cough into a fist, glancing off down the block. “Seem pretty brave to me.”
When I look back at her, she’s smiling at me.
Not a grudging one. A big, unrestrained one that punches me square in the jaw.
“Uh…”
“You’re not scary at all,” she informs me brightly.
“Yes, I am,” I shout back, because it feels totally necessary. Like I’m acting out of self-preservation here. Am I? What has happened to me in the last thirty minutes?
“Taylor, who are you talking to?” Following the newcomer’s muffled question, footsteps approach behind her and a man appears, grinding a knuckle into his eye socket and yawning. When he opens his eyes and spots me in the doorway, he jolts backward with a startled curse.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“See?” I tell her, caught between satisfaction and…embarrassment, an emotion I am very unfamiliar with. It has never existed for me. Until now, apparently, when this woman is about to realize I’m the beast and she’s beauty.
But she just goes on smiling. “Do you want to come inside and look at the guest book?” She pushes the door wider. “I just made lemonade.”
I’m giving up too much ground here, so I say, very pointedly, “Do I look like I drink lemonade?” I step inside the house and they both back up, the brother—Jude, I believe she said—edging toward his sister protectively. “I’ll take a beer.”
“Okay,” Taylor says, nudging her brother in the ribs. “He’s going to let us help solve the murder case!”
“I didn’t say that—”
But she’s already skipping off toward the kitchen.
What in God’s name have I gotten myself into?
Chapter 4
Taylor
I hand the bounty hunter his bottle of beer and he grimaces at the label.
“Sorry.” I take the chair across from him in the living room. “It’s all we have.”
“Peach-flavored beer.” He turns it over and reads the nutrition facts, as if he suspects we’re playing a practical joke on him. For once since the hunter arrived, he’s not inspecting me very closely, so I use the opportunity to return that scrutiny. Based on appearances alone, this man might have just walked out of a criminal underworld. If the permanent scowl on his face didn’t scream villain, then the long, unkempt hair and poorly scrawled tattoos do the trick, as do the scars on his knuckles and the side of his neck.
And then there is his attire. Filthy boots covered in suspicious substances, jeans and a black T-shirt in dire need of washing—or burning—and worn, brown leather cuffs on his wrists.
Sitting on the fluffy white couch and frowning down at the peach-flavored beer, the giant—at least six foot five—man looks comically out of place. He belongs in the back room of a roadside bar playing pool and inciting violence and causing general mayhem. He’s been plucked from that sketchy scenario and dropped into yet another nautical-themed living room, surrounded by tasteful reminders of the ocean and throw pillows covered in little ship wheels.
For all intents and purposes, he should be terrifying.
He might be. If it weren’t for a few little clues that he is, in fact, the opposite of scary.
In regards to me, anyway. I’m sure everyone else’s terror is warranted.
When I informed the bounty hunter that I’d discovered the body, he turned white as a ghost. Looked like he was preparing to toss his cookies right there in the street. For that fleeting handful of seconds, his scowl dropped and he shifted straight into protective.
