Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) (7 page)

And that’s what he’d do.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said
suddenly.

“Like what?”

“Like you can’t decide whether to cart me off
to jail for being an axe murderess or...” Her voice trailed off and
she bit her lip again. Her nip plumped the flesh to a lush,
inviting fullness.

A cop had to be good at schooling his
features, keeping his true thoughts off his face and out of his
eyes. Brax was usually damn good at it, too, but Simone saw right
through him.

Maybe he shouldn’t salivate quite so much
when looking at her hair tumbling over her shoulders in artful
disarray almost as if she’d been in bed when he’d shown up at her
door. But then he’d started remembering that slow sensual
massage.

He picked up her hand and placed the DVD in
it. “Why don’t you put the movie in?” That should get his mind off
creamy shoulders
and
a bare nape
begging to be
kissed.

She backed up a step, stopped only by the
edge of the coffee table. “Popcorn. I should make some
popcorn.”

He pulled a packet from his back pocket and
tossed it on the table. “I brought licorice.” Why the hell he’d
picked out the candy while waiting in line for the video, he
couldn’t say. “Start the movie,” he whispered, as if he were
talking about something far different. Her scent teased his
nose.

The goal, he repeated to himself as she
slipped from between him and the table to kneel in front of the
TV.

She fumbled opening the DVD, then again
trying to get the disk out. Those damn disks could be tricky.
Pushing a button, the player flashed on and a tray slid out. She
plopped the disk in, closed the tray, then hopped to her feet and
skittered across the living room to the couch. Grabbing a remote,
she flopped down on a cushion in the corner and pointed.

Nothing happened.

“Darn it,” she whispered and poked at the
remote a couple of times.

He held out his hand. “Here.”

She clutched the gadget to her chest. “I know
how to work my own remote.”

He glanced at the blank TV. “I don’t see
anything.”

She pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, and
pointed again. Still nothing. She pushed a series of buttons in
sequence, with the same result. Nothing.

“You’re a jinx. It always worked before.” She
tossed it to him.

He looked at it, pushed one button, and the
TV came to life.

“How’d you do that?”

He beamed the way Whitey had last night in
the Flood’s End mirror when she told him he should have been a
writer. “Remotes are man’s work.”

He pushed a series of buttons and magically
the opening credits began to roll.

“Sit.” She gestured to the opposite end of
the couch. “Over there.”

He plopped down in the middle, next to her,
his knee almost touching hers. “It’s more comfortable here.”

She looked at him, not the screen, where
Dorothy was doing...something. In the fading light of the evening
sun, Simone’s hazel eyes deepened to a richer shade of green. Her
lip biting had transferred a dash of red lipstick to her front
tooth. She closed her mouth and licked it off, as if she’d known
what fascinated him.

He slid an arm along the back of the sofa
until his hand touched the gold of her hair. Soft. Silky. Just as
he’d imagined. He took a lock between his thumb and two fingers,
stroking it.

“What are you doing?”

Getting lost in the feel of her hair.

Which was not the reason he’d sat so close.
No, he’d chosen that exact spot because the sun was setting and the
room was darkening, and he’d needed to be close to read the
expression in her eyes when he questioned her. At least that’s what
he’d told himself, so why wasn’t he doing some basic
interrogation?

She leaned over and snagged the bag of
licorice he’d thrown on the table. “Can I open it?”

“Sure.”

She ripped the package, pulled out a whip,
then offered the bag to him. Brax shook his head.

“I logged onto your website.” That wasn’t
what he was supposed to say. He was supposed to ask a question he
already knew the answer to, a difficult or embarrassing question
about which she might feel the need to lie. To gauge her reaction
and analyze how her brain functioned. He was supposed to administer
a test.

“Oh.” Her gaze flicked to the TV screen.
“You’re missing the witch.”

He heard the music and knew the old witch was
riding her bicycle with Toto in the basket. “I’ve seen this
part.”

She sucked on the end of the licorice, then
bit off a small chunk, chewing as she watched him instead of the
movie.

He didn’t realize he’d leaned closer until
she put the flat of her hand to his chest and pushed. If she’d used
her finger, he’d have lost it completely.

“Brax.”

“Hmm.” He loved the way her lips puckered
around his name.

“I might write erotica on the Internet, but
I’m not going to lick your ice-cream cone.”

His ice-cream cone reacted immediately, as if
she’d said the opposite. “Bad choice of words on my part.”

“It was?” Was that disappointment in her
voice? She bit off two more pieces of licorice and stared at him
thoughtfully.

“Yeah.” She wasn’t an
ice-cream-cone-on-the-first-date kind of woman. “I don’t know what
came over me.” A lingering heat from reading about sensual massage
had come over him.

And the dazzle of her smile that had flitted
through his dreams last night.

She stuck the last bit of red licorice
between her lips.

He backed off, leaned heavily against the
sofa to run both hands through his hair. Where the hell was his
perspective? It wasn’t just his life that had turned upside down in
Cottonmouth. He, himself, had become topsy-turvy. He was usually
rational, analytical, and focused. His reactions to Simone,
however, had proved anything but. “I’m exceptionally sorry.”

She hummed beside him.

“I’m usually more circumspect.”

Then she started to sing along with the
movie. Slightly off-key, deeper than Judy Garland’s sweet tones,
but Simone’s voice burrowed beneath his ribs and shot up to grab
hold of his heart. Something glistened in her pretty hazel eyes.
The notion gripped him that she wasn’t singing for Dorothy, but for
herself, and she had yet to find her way over any rainbows.

Maggie had told him as much.

He stroked the back of her hand with his
knuckles. She hugged her knees to her chest, her bare feet flat on
the sofa, her toes curled over the edge. Then she blinked away
tears.

He thought she might flick off his touch, but
instead she said, “I love that song.” She glanced at him, as if to
assess his reaction. “I’m a sucker for sappy movies.”

He was a sucker for her. “We should get to
know each other better.”

She gave him a
where-the-hell-did-that-come-from look.

“I mean, we should get to know each other
better before we start thinking about ice-cream cones.” Not that he
couldn’t think about them, in the most politically correct fashion,
of course. Whatever that was.

She continued to hug her knees. “I bet Maggie
already told you everything there is to know about me.”

And, he surmised, Maggie had probably told
her
everything there was to know about
him
. “Does
that bother you?”

She thought about it, staring at a point on
the sofa beyond his head. “No. Everyone knows everything around
here. I suppose you want to know about my spectacular failure in
the cutthroat world of technical writing.”

His hand trailed down her leg to her feet
where she’d now crossed them at the ankles. “If it’s
important.”

“Important? Of course it’s important.”

Why? Everyone failed at something or other in
their lives. Divorce. Letting your friend get murdered. Countless
errors in judgment with eventual disastrous consequences for
someone.

He knew Maggie hadn’t told her about his
Cottonmouth failure. He hadn’t given Maggie more than the bare
facts without the emotion. He certainly hadn’t shared the guilt. He
wouldn’t burden Simone with it now. But he would listen to whatever
she needed to tell him.

“Tell me.”
Tell me everything about
yourself
.

She rested her chin on her knees and looked
at him. “My mother always says I’m like the little squirrel who
runs out into the middle of the road in front of a speeding car. I
twitch this way and that way, and before I make up my mind which
way to run, I get squashed.”

Her mother. He really did not like the woman
without even having met her. “But you’re doing fine now.”

He no longer questioned that she’d thrived in
Goldstone. He had the feeling that Simone would thrive wherever
life dumped her. After all, she’d always have that smile.

* * * * *

Simone tipped her head to one side. “Yeah. I
feel safe and secure here in Goldstone. This is my home.” Putting
her foot down, she tapped against the carpet and floor of her
trailer. “It’s got a foundation, you know. Most trailers sit on
cinder blocks, but this one’s got a real foundation.”

“It’s a very nice trailer.”

She laughed. Brax couldn’t know how many
times she’d heard similar platitudes. “You sound like my mother.
She chokes every time she has to say the word trailer so she avoids
it like the plague.”

“I mean it. You seem...” He paused. Probably
searching for the right word again so he wouldn’t offend her.
“Settled.”

It was a good description. Most people never
found that settled place. They were always looking for more,
needing more, never content with what they had. Simone savored the
peace Goldstone had brought her. “I’m doing great. Never
better.”

“So, what else do you want?”

“It’s your turn. I answered, now I get to
ask.”

He considered her a moment, putting his hand
on her foot. Only once he was touching her again did he say, “Okay,
shoot your question.”

She read his face like a map. He thought
she’d ask about his divorce. Most women wanted to know about a
man’s failures in love. Not Simone. She’d had too many failures at
love herself.

Like Andrew, her ex-fiancé. Putting it
mildly, they hadn’t been compatible in the bedroom. She knew it was
all her fault. But sometimes, well, she got carried away. Loudly.
Once Andrew even covered her mouth with his hand. It would have
been okay, maybe, if he’d kissed her instead, but he’d used his
hand to muffle her cries. No, her screams. She was a screamer. Oh
my God. Her mother would have been appalled at her lack of control.
Excess and exuberance were dirty words in the Chandler household.
After that, Andrew simply took care of the problem by not touching
her in certain spots.

So no, Simone would not ask about Brax’s
divorce. “Did Maggie really beat you up when you were kids?”

He laughed, half relief, half openmouthed
wonder, she was sure. “Yeah. All the time.”

“And you never hit her back?”

“She was a girl.”

“But she tortured you mercilessly.”

He shook his head. “Never hit her.”

“But you did retaliate in some way, didn’t
you?”

He gave her a crooked smile. “It took years
of planning.”

“What did you do?”

“Timing was everything.”

“But what’d you do?” She waited, feeling
breathless and wide-eyed.

“Well...”

“Come on, come on.” She twitched her toes
under his palm.

The sun had fallen completely behind the
hills. The room was dark and intimate. Dorothy was skipping down
the Yellow Brick Road. Simone wanted more than Brax’s hand on her
foot.

The warmth of his skin heated her on the
inside. Too much. He chose that moment to withdraw his light touch,
as if he, too, felt the sudden intimacy. And needed to break it.
She should have been glad. She’d been rushing toward something she
feared she couldn’t handle.

Instead, she mourned the loss. Jeez, she
wanted him to touch her. Badly. Three long years badly.

“In the tenth grade, Maggie had a huge crush
on Ricky Meyers. So I invited him over to go swimming because we
were the only ones in the neighborhood with a pool, one of those
big Doughboy things. I told Maggie he was upstairs in my room and
wanted to see her.”

She gasped. “You didn’t let her walk in on
him naked?”

He nodded. “I was only twelve, and I figured
she’d get the shock of her life when she saw him changing into his
swimsuit.”

“You were so bad.” But terribly cute.

“Only thing was, Ricky wasn’t just changing
into his swimsuit.”

She cocked her head. “What was he doing?”

“Then, I wasn’t sure. She screamed, and he
ran out. For weeks afterward, I thought he had sunburn because his
face was red whenever I saw him. Beet red.”

“Beet red.”

“Yeah.
Beat
red.” This time he
stressed the word.

Oh my God. She covered her mouth.
Her
face turned beet red, she was sure. And it made her think of her
afternoon fantasies about Brax all over again. “He wasn’t...”

“Yeah. He was,” Brax said gravely.

“Sheriff Braxton, that is the worst prank
I’ve ever heard.” She wanted to let go with an exuberant laugh her
mother would have disapproved of, while the heat in her cheeks
reached deep inside, warming those certain spots of hers to
conflagration stage.

Brax raised a brow. “Well, I didn’t know he
was going to do
that
. I didn’t even know what
that
was. At the time.” He spread the fingers of one hand, keeping the
other in contact with her skin, her arm, her elbow, her calf, the
back of her ankle, driving her crazy. “I led a very sheltered
life.”

“Poor Maggie.” She smiled behind her
hand.

“I wasn’t sure she’d recover. My dad grounded
me for a month and told me if she was scarred irreparably by the
incident, it would be a weight I’d carry on my shoulders the rest
of my life.”