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All the stress was getting to me. I hadn’t been able to sleep all week. And now I was jittery and nervous. I banged out a few sets of pushups in my room, even though I’d put myself through an intense workout this morning. I still had so much physical aggression I needed to work off.
I’d woken up pissed off. After last night, I was confused and frustrated. This woman was everywhere. All over my house and my office and my town.
When I closed my eyes at night, her image was imprinted on the backs of my eyelids. The freckles, the ponytail, the damn bras.
And the questions. So. Many. Questions.
It was her job, of course. A job I had hired her to do. But dear God, I couldn’t deal.
Because Parker’s questions didn’t only pertain to the investigation. She wanted to understand every single detail of each interaction, relationship, event, family, and business that had anything to do with Lovewell. All the time.
And me. She asked far too many personal questions. About my coffee and my workout routine and my car and my clothes.
And it wasn’t only surface-level stuff. She dug deep. Evading her constant probing and analysis was getting exhausting. It was like she wanted to understand me on a cellular level. She didn’t understand that it wasn’t worth her time. I was not that interesting, and she was not going to discover that my soul contained some hidden depths full of meaningful emotions. I was an asshole. And a workaholic. And a pessimist. There wasn’t much more to it.
But she persisted. Smiling, laughing, eating meals with me, and teasing me. So I was distracted. Out of sorts.
And none of my usual coping mechanisms were helping. Drinking and obsessive planning and preparation were not doing it anymore. And given that I lived in the world’s tiniest town and was in a fake committed relationship, I couldn’t fall back on casual sex.
My mother, always concerned about my health and stress levels, had gifted me a basket of fancy tea. She was always on me to relax and de-stress, whatever the fuck that meant. I would relax when the business was thriving. When all my family members were provided for, healthy, and happy. When I could wrap each one of them up in a bubble of protection that only my money, hard work, and planning could provide.
Then I’d fucking relax.
But my father had been murdered and both my brothers had been in danger due to this mess. It was not business as usual right now. Yet it seemed I was the only person who really understood the implications.
I flipped the kettle on. Might as well offer Parker a cup of tea from the basket my mom had delivered. I hadn’t seen her all day, and the logical part of my brain screamed to stay away from her, let her work in peace. That she was an added complication I could not manage. But another part of me, the naive, stupid part, overrode that. Choosing to be a good roommate by checking on her and offering her sustenance.
I headed upstairs and followed the sound of loud music. Rather than leading me to her room, it brought me to the tiny guest room she had been using as an office.
Since she’d arrived, I hadn’t been in here. I’d wanted to give her some privacy to do her work. Amazon packages had been piling up on the porch for the last week, so she’d obviously been filling the space and doing what she needed to do, but I was not prepared for what I saw when I hovered at the threshold of the room.
Parker, wearing tiny shorts and a tank top. With no bra.
Dancing around to some kind of girl power pop song.
Damn, she was sexy. Not in an obvious, push-up bra and fake eyelashes kind of way. No, her personality created a shield that hid her charms well. Only once a person breached her walls did they see the real her.
She was of medium height, with strong muscles but also soft curves. Full breasts and round hips, but strong shoulders and thighs.
Her quads flexed as she danced across the room. Her face glistened with sweat, and her chest was heaving, drawing even more attention to those braless breasts. I flexed my fingers as my brain pondered how perfectly they would fit in my hands.
I was transfixed. I couldn’t look away as she scribbled on a Post-it note, then stuck it on a large whiteboard, all the while bopping her head to the beat.
My body was on high alert, and blood pumped through my veins, urging me to flee this potentially dangerous situation. I lifted one foot, ready to turn on my heel and heed that instinct, but was stopped by the sound of her voice.
“Are you creeping on me, Gagnon?”
I froze, though I ignored her comment. Pulling air deep into my lungs, I stepped forward instead of back and shuffled close to the whiteboard. It was half-full of index cards in different colors, with names, dates, and locations. One side was devoted to the four families—who was related to whom, and who was in charge.
My blood boiled when my focus landed on printed photos of Mitch Hebert and his brother Paul.
“Did you make a murder wall?” I asked, working to decipher her messy handwriting.
She turned the music down and crossed her arms. “What are you talking about?”
“You know. Like in the movies. Conspiracy theorists and killers always have walls covered with photos, scraps of paper, and string.”
Shaking her head, she huffed. “This is a visual overview of my investigation and family trees for the Gagnons and the Heberts, as well as the other two logging families. Any resemblance to the paraphernalia of a serial killer is purely coincidental.”
