Sex, Lies, and Online Dating (20 page)

She pushed her hair from her face and lifted her chin to study the red patch of skin on her chin where his stubble had scratched her. He wanted her. She hadn’t been wrong about that. She’d never been wrong about that, but it wasn’t love.

He didn’t love her and that hurt. It hurt like a red-hot clinker next to her heart. He wanted to be with her. He made her laugh and made her dizzy with his touch. He made her forget about the reason she was staying with him, and for today, that was enough. She would worry about tomorrow…well, tomorrow.

When she opened the bathroom door, he was waiting for her, leaning his back against the wall. His chest was bare and he wore his Levi’s low enough on his hips that it was obvious he wasn’t wearing his boxers. An Irish setter sat at his feet, and he held the dog’s collar in one hand.

“This is Millie,” he said.

She was a beautiful dog, with rich auburn hair and bright brown eyes. Her tongue hung out one side of her mouth as she looked up at Lucy. “So you’re the infamous Millie.” Lucy bent at the waist and scratched the top of the dog’s head. “At least Quinn didn’t lie about the color of your hair.”

“I’m afraid if I let her go, she’s going to try and sniff you.” Lucy held her hand in front of the dog’s nose. “That’s not the part she wants to sniff.”

She looked up into Quinn’s face. “Which is the reason I have a cat.”

“Cats don’t fetch sticks or jump in ponds to retrieve birds.”

“Which tells you how smart they are.”

He shook his head. “Come and watch this.” She followed him down the hall, watching the shadows slide over the smooth skin of his back. In the kitchen, he took a dog biscuit out of the cupboard. “Sit, Millie,” he commanded. Once the dog obeyed, he set the biscuit on the end of her nose. “Stay.” Poor Millie stared at the treat, her eyes crossed, until Quinn said, “Okay.” Then she flipped it up into the air and caught it with her mouth.

“A cat can’t do that.”

“If Snookie wanted to, he could.”

He gave her a skeptical look and scratched his dog’s ear. “Your cat probably can’t move that fast.”

He was probably right. “Are you disparaging Mr. Snookums?”

“He’s fat.”

“Husky.”

“Same thing.” Millie stood and walked a tight circle around Lucy, then sniffed her knee. “No. Sit Millie,” Quinn ordered, and the dog instantly obeyed.

Lucy placed her hands on her hips. “Snookie has an eating disorder. It’s not his fault.”

Quinn chuckled, threaded his arms around her waist, and pulled her up against his chest. “You’re cute when you get all worked up over that fat bag of fur.”

“Hey—” She might have defended Mr. Snookums’s honor if she hadn’t felt a wet nose on the inside of her thigh. “Wow.” She jumped a little and rose onto her tiptoes. “Your dog just goosed me.”

“I knew it was too good to last.” He dropped his hands and moved to the back door. “Out,” he said.

Millie walked slowly toward Quinn, then gave Lucy one last accusing look over her shoulder. “Won’t she get cold?”

“No.” Quinn shut the door behind his dog. “She has a house in the garage, and there’s a dog door leading into the backyard. She’ll be okay.” The overhead kitchen light poured down his bare shoulders and back as he walked to the refrigerator. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

“Depends on the offer.” She didn’t think she was up for another carb overload.

He opened the freezer. “I got raspberry sherbet.”

“I could always eat sherbet.”

He pulled a carton from the freezer, then shut the door. “There isn’t much here, so we’ll share.” He grabbed a bowl and a spoon and began to scoop.

There were things Lucy was dying to know about Quinn, beyond his job and how he planned to catch a psycho who was killing men and writing letters to Lucy. Important things like, “Tell me about Amanda.”

He glanced up from the carton. “Why?”

“Just making conversation.” She moved to the kitchen table and leaned her behind into it. “You know, I tell you stuff and you tell me stuff.”

“Amanda was short and had dark hair. Green eyes and big tits…ah, breasts.”

“Naturally,” Lucy said dryly.

He laughed and dumped the last of the sherbet into the bowl. “She had an annoying habit of leaving her long hair all over the place.” He moved toward Lucy and fed her a big bite.

It was cold and kind of tangy and felt good sliding down her throat. “How does a person leave her hair all over the place?”

“Beats the hell out of me.” He took a bite and pulled the spoon from his mouth. “She had this massive amount of hair, and it just fell out all over the damn house.”

A woman with big breasts and massive hair. Lucy hated her on principle. “Have you had a girlfriend since Amanda?”

“No.”

“Hookups?”

“I don’t remember.”

Great. He knew about her past relationships, but he didn’t seem all that willing to talk about his. “Are you going to remember me once I’m gone?” she asked.

He fed her another bite and pulled the spoon from her mouth. “You’re not going anywhere.” He brushed the back of the spoon against her right nipple. It puckered beneath the cold metal.

She looked down. “What are you doing?”

“Getting your nipples to poke the front of your shirt. That’s really sexy.”

She tried not to roll her eyes. “How long have you been thinking about that?” She raised her gaze, but his attention was on the front of her shirt.

“Since you walked out of the bathroom.”

“That’s pervy. This whole time when we were talking about your dog and my cat and your former fiancée?”

“Yeah, it’s called multitasking.” He looked up and shrugged one bare shoulder. “I can talk to you about one thing but be thinking about something totally different.”

“Must be a detective thing.”

He chuckled and stuck his spoon in the middle of the sherbet. “More like a guy thing. We talk about shit you want to talk about, but we’re really just trying to get you in bed. Again.”

“You don’t care about past relationships?”

He pulled out the spoon and set the bowl behind her on the table. “I only care about you.” He slid the pink-covered spoon across the tip of her left breast. “And me. And how I’m going to get you out of those panties.”

She gasped. “You got sherbet on my shirt.”

A purely carnal smile curved his lips. “Isn’t that a shame? I guess I’ll have to clean it off.” He dipped his head and sucked her through her shirt. The mix of cold sherbet and hot mouth scattered tingles across her chest and down her abdomen. She arched her back and ran her fingers through the side of his dark hair as he licked her shirt clean. When he was through, he popped a few buttons and pushed the material aside to suck her bared breast. Without lifting his mouth, he placed his hands on her hips, lifted, and sat her down. Right on the bowl of ice cream. It tipped sideways and raspberry sherbet slipped between her thighs.

“Crap!” She grabbed the bowl and scooped up the sherbet. “That’s cold!”

“Looks like I made another mess. This time on your panties.” He took the bowl from her hands and placed it on the table by her hip. He hooked the leg of a chair with his foot and pulled it forward.

“Put your feet on my shoulders while I clean you up,” he said as he sat and scooted the chair even closer.

She didn’t have to be told twice.

“Umm.” He licked a spot on the inside of her thigh with his wet tongue. “You taste good. Like raspberries and warm skin.” He kissed a path to the edge of her panties. “When I’m finished tasting you right here, I’m going to hit that spot of yours again.”

She leaned back and rested her weight on her hands behind her. “You said something about making me scream like a porn star.”

He smiled and dipped his head. Being a man who could multitask, he managed both.

After the ten o’clock news, they’d taken a shower. They’d soaped each other up, touched and rubbed and made love against the shower stall. Then they’d climbed into Quinn’s bed and fallen into an exhausted sleep. At least she had. Around 3:00 a.m. he’d awoken her to make love again. He’d been sweet and gentle and her heart had about burst, unable to contain her feelings in such a small place. They’d had sex four times. Four amazing times, made even more amazing because she loved him.

She loved him but didn’t really have much of a clue how he felt about her. Oh, she knew he was attracted to her and that he liked her well enough. She wasn’t sure what that meant—in the long term. Heck, she wasn’t even sure about the short term after it was safe for her to go home again. For him, last night could have been just sex.

In the distance she heard a low and steady thumping and something that sounded a little like a conveyor belt. She glanced around for her clothes and recalled she’d last seen them on the bathroom floor. She slid naked from the bed. “Don’t even think about it,” she warned Millie as she walked to the master bathroom. Her clothes weren’t there, and she wrapped herself in a towel and moved down the hall to the guest room. She traded the towel for her pink terry-cloth robe and followed the thumping sound to a third bedroom set up with a desk, weight equipment, and the object of the noise. Quinn, wearing a pair of loose gray shorts, with an iPod strapped around his arm and headphones plugging his ears, was jogging on a treadmill. His hair clung to the back of his neck, and with each step of his running shoes, the bottom of his shorts flipped up a little.

Lucy moved into the room and sat on a workout bench loaded with black weights resting in the bars at one end. She crossed one leg over the other and studied his smooth skin, the play of muscles, and the slight indent of his spine. Over the rasp of the treadmill, it sounded like he was talking to himself. She listened closer and smiled.

Good Lord. He was
singing.
And not well. In fact, it was quite awful. So awful that she couldn’t even begin to recognize the song. Maybe he was singing about falling on something, and when he hit a particularly sour note, Lucy laughed. She couldn’t help it.

The wires to his iPod swung as he looked back over his shoulder. “Christ,” he swore, grasped the hand rails, and put his feet on the sides of the treadmill as it continued without him. He pulled the earphones from his ears. “How long have you been sitting there?”

“Long enough.”

He turned off the treadmill and grabbed the white towel hanging on the rail. He wiped his face and said into his towel, “Well, that sucks.”

She tried not to smile. She really did. “It’s a good thing you’re good-looking.”

He ran the towel over his head, then he hung it around his neck as he moved to stand in front of her. “Are you saying I have a shitty singing voice?”

“Yeah.” Her foot swung back and forth as her eyes took in the hard muscle of his chest. “What were you listening to?”

His gaze lowered from her face to the deep V where her robe had fallen open. “Velvet Revolver. They’re going to play here in a few months.” He looked up into her face. “Wanna go?”

Her foot stopped. “With you?”

“No.” He frowned. “With Millie. Of course with me.”

“Like in a real date?”

He shrugged his bare shoulders. “Yeah. Why not?”

The concert was about three months away, which meant he saw them together three months in the future. Last night hadn’t been just about sex for him. “Sure. When was the last time you were on an actual date?”

He wiped his chest with the towel. “Not counting all the Internet dates, I think it was when Kurt set me up on a blind date about four months ago.”

“I hate blind dates.”

He hung the towel over the weight bar. “She wasn’t bad. We just didn’t hit it off.” He unhooked the iPod and moved to the desk filled with his laptop and open files.

“I hate getting all dressed up and going on dates and all you get out of it is a waste of time.”

He set down the iPod and picked up a coffee mug. “Her cat was even more annoying than yours.”

Lucy opened her mouth to defend Mr. Snookums, then closed it. “How long were you in her house?”

He raised the mug to his lips. “A while.”

“I thought you didn’t hit it off.”

He took a long drink, then said, “We didn’t. When I dropped her off, she invited me in for coffee and I went in.”

Lucy stood. “When I invited you into my house for coffee, you turned me down.”

“That’s because I wanted to do you in every documented position and a few I’d made up.” He set down the mug and moved toward her. “But I was wired for sound and couldn’t even let you touch me.”

“What?” Lucy held out her hand like a traffic cop. “You wore a wire? When?”

“When we were together.”

“Every time?” She dropped her hand to one hip.

He stopped a few feet in front of her. “Yeah. You didn’t make any embarrassing confessions if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Her mind moved from date to date and landed on that night in the hall. Her hands had been all over him. “Where was the wire the night I was supposed to kill you?”

He folded his arms across his bare chest, and his face set in that expression she’d come to recognize. The one that told her he didn’t want to answer her. She folded her arms and waited him out. Finally he said, “I wasn’t wearing one that night.”

“Where was it?” Lucy asked, although she had a fairly good guess. She didn’t believe for a second that the police had gone to the trouble of setting her up but hadn’t wired the house for sound. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought about it before—it was so obvious. Maybe because she’d had other things on her mind.

“There were digital recorders hidden in the kitchen, living room, and my bedroom.”

She tried to remember what she’d said that night and couldn’t. She turned away and placed a hand to her forehead. Her heart sped up and her face got hot. What had the police heard? “My God, that night…when my shirt was off and your hand…what were we saying…what—”

“No one could hear anything.” Quinn grabbed her arm and turned her around to face him. “That’s why I carried you into the hall. I didn’t want anyone to hear us. I wanted you all to myself without anyone watching.”

Lucy felt her speeding heart stop. “Watching?”

He leaned his head back and covered his face with his hands. “Shit.”

“There were video cameras?”

“Yeah.” He dropped his hands to his sides.

“Oh my God!”
She pulled the lapels of the robe close around her throat and tightened the belt. “Where were the cameras?”

“The audio and video surveillance were in the air purifier in the kitchen, in a fake clock on the mantel in the living room, and in a clock radio beside my bed.”

She thought back on that night. They’d never made it to his bedroom. They’d eaten dinner in the kitchen, and in the living room they’d kissed and he’d taken off her sweater. She gasped and shoved at his bare chest. “How could you do that to me?”

“Lucy.” He grasped the tops of her arms. “I’m sorry. We thought…I thought you were Breathless. We thought that if you—”

“How many people were watching?”

“Two. Kurt and Anita were in a van outside.”

Lucy thought back and could recall seeing a van parked on the opposite side of the street. Two people had been in that van watching him undress her and touch her breasts. She was horrified. “Oh God. Oh God, and there’s a tape?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Evidence room, I would imagine.”

“How many people have seen it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.” She tried to pull away, but his grasp tightened. “It isn’t that bad.”

“Have you seen it?”

“No, but the cameras couldn’t see down the hall.”

This time when she pulled away, he let her go. Lucy looked into his handsome face and felt the backs of her eyes sting. She refused to cry. Inside her, anger and humiliation gave way to a deeper feeling of utter betrayal. It didn’t matter that Quinn hadn’t had a choice. He’d set her up, and now there was a videotape of him taking off her sweater and touching her breasts. It was out there. Somewhere. For strange men to see. “I have to get out of here,” she said and walked around him. Even in her misery, she wasn’t going to act recklessly. “I’ll take you up on that offer to move cops into my house.” In a daze, she left the room. Maybe she could get the tapes somehow. Maybe if she called a lawyer, she could make the police give them to her.

She walked into the spare bedroom and tossed her empty suitcase on the bed. She’d call first thing tomorrow morning.

“Lucy.”

She turned and looked at him standing in the doorway. A dark lock of hair fell over his forehead as his dark gaze stared into her. After everything, there was a part of her that wanted to throw herself against his bare chest and forget what he’d done. He could make her forget about everything for the few moments he held her. She loved him, and she wished she’d never met him.

“Promise me you won’t leave until after I get back.”

Once again she felt humiliated and heartbroken and all because she’d made the mistake of loving Quinn.

“Promise me,” he repeated.

She supposed he needed to get the security in place at her house before she returned there. “Fine.”

“Promise,” he insisted.

“Cross my heart.” Once again she’d been a fool where he was concerned.

Lucy turned her back on him and unzipped the suitcase she’d unpacked the night before. She heard him move down the hall, and a few moments later, the water to the shower turned on. She shut the door and sat on the bed. Her vison blurred, and she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. She did not want to cry. She would not let Quinn see her cry.

She thought about the night before and the way he’d touched her. She thought about the way he’d made her feel, and the way she felt right now. In her mind, she could not resolve the two feelings. They didn’t fit. The pleasure and pain of loving Quinn, being thrown from one extreme to the other, was too much.

She listened for the water, and after it shut off, she moved across the room to the small dresser. She opened the top drawer and discovered the missing white blouse and pink panties she’d lost the night before. They’d been washed and folded and placed neatly in the drawer. She picked up the blouse and held it to her nose. It smelled like Quinn’s shirts. Again her vision blurred, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Even with everything else going on in her life, Quinn and her broken heart took front and center. It was crazy, but there was no denying it.

She heard Quinn’s footsteps on the other side of the closed door. They paused for several heartbeats before continuing down the hall. A few moments later, she heard the garage door open and his Jeep pull away. When he returned, she would be ready to go.

Lucy set her black bra and underwear, a khaki skirt, and a black T-shirt on top of the dresser, then dumped the rest of her clothes back into her suitcase. She opened the door, and Millie followed her into the bathroom.

“Out,” she commanded. Millie lay down and looked up at Lucy through sad eyes. “Fine,” Lucy muttered. She jumped into the shower and washed her hair and body. When she was through, she stepped over Millie and brushed her teeth and dried her hair. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, and by the time Quinn returned, she was sitting on his leather couch, dressed and waiting for him.

His face was set in hard lines, and his jaw looked brittle enough to break. He wore jeans and a white Guinness T-shirt. She stood, expecting him to give her the details of the new security arrangement. Instead he took her hand and placed two small cassettes in her palm. “What’s this?”

“The videotapes taken the night the house was wired.”

She looked up. He had his cop face on, the blank, expressionless set to his features that made him look hard. Except for his dark eyes. He couldn’t wipe the emotion from his eyes. It flickered just beneath the surface, hot and alive and something he couldn’t control the way he could control the rigid set of his jaw. “How did you get these?”

“Don’t ask.” He dropped his hand.

“Did you check them out or something?”

He looked at her for an eternity before he said, “No.”

“Quinn?” He simply stared at her, and this time she knew that he wasn’t going to answer. She couldn’t outwait him for an answer, but she didn’t need to. His silence spoke for him. He’d stolen them out of the evidence room. For her. “But what if they’re missed? Won’t you get in some kind of trouble? Fired even?”

He just continued to stare at her.

“Won’t someone know they’re missing?”

“Probably. The less you know about it, the better.”

“What am I supposed to do with these?”