Superstition (30 page)

“I won’t have to go to jail, will I?” Livvy sounded petrified. “He called me Shamu.”

It occurred to Nicky then that what Livvy had done could probably be considered assault, the Shamu comment notwithstanding—unless, of course, Ben was dead.

“Hush,” Leonora hissed at her older daughter. “You’re not going to jail.” Then, giving Nicky a little push in the center of her back as the cruiser’s headlights went out and its door opened, she added under her breath, “Get rid of him.
Now
.”

Okay.
Nicky started to move as her mind went into semi-hysterical overdrive.
Once more into the breach . . .

“Evening, folks.” Joe was out of the car now, slamming the door behind him as he walked toward them. His tall form was in deep shadow. Nicky realized with a thrill of horror that
they
were in the light.

“Hi, Joe,” her family chorused. A lightning glance over her shoulder told Nicky that they were all clustered in front of the telltale legs now, forming what amounted to a human wall that unfortunately failed to hide Ben’s feet. Uncle Ham smiled; Leonora smiled. And Livvy—white as flour, round as the Great Pumpkin, eyes as big as Toll House cookies, and grinning like she had rigor mortis—Livvy leaned against Leonora’s shoulder and gave a little three-fingered wave.

Nicky couldn’t see Uncle John in the tree. Hopefully, Joe couldn’t see him, either.

But those of her relatives that she could see looked about as relaxed and natural as
American Gothic.

Horribly conscious that as soon as Joe rounded the hood of his car he would be able to see Ben’s feet, Nicky moved faster.

“Everybody okay?” Joe asked. He was close enough now that Nicky could see that he was frowning a little. Presumably something about her relatives’ posture was starting to pique his interest.

“Just fine.”

“Sure thing.”

“Absolutely.”

The responses came in an almost simultaneous chorus—and sounded false as hell to Nicky.

Joe had almost reached the edge of his front bumper.

She rounded the hood of his car and stopped dead in his path, successfully blocking his forward progress.

Yes.

He looked down at her, and his expression changed. His eyes took on a dangerous glint, and his lips compressed. He looked, in fact, like a man in a snit. With her.

Well, good.
Come to think of it, she was in a snit with him, too, and, moreover, she was going to beat him to the punch.

“We need to talk.” She glared up at him with all the ferocity she could muster.

“You’re damned right we do.” He kept his voice down, so that his response went no farther than her ears.

“Great.” Then, having just had another one of her patented eureka moments, she added, “In private.”

“Honey, you read my mind.”

She was ticked off at him, scared of ghosts and killers, and worried that her temporarily psychotic sister might be headed for either the loony bin or the pokey, whichever got to her first, but still, something about him calling her “honey” in that sexy Yankee voice of his sent a little thrill curling through her stomach—or somewhere thereabouts.

“We’re going for a walk on the beach,” she called over her shoulder without looking around. Then, with her mother’s falsely cheery “Y’all have fun” echoing in her ears, she caught Joe’s hand and dragged him away from the scene of the crime, toward the front of the house and the rickety wooden walkway that led over the dunes and down to the beach.

13

B
EING DRAGGED OFF into the dark by a gorgeous, sexy woman he was developing a considerable jones for wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to him, Joe reflected as Nicky towed him along like a dog owner with a recalcitrant mutt, but under the circumstances, it was damned suspicious.

“So, what was going on back there?” he asked as they left the shelter of the house behind and started down the rickety wooden walkway that connected Twybee Cottage to the beach. A considerable number of the old houses that fronted the ocean had private boardwalks rising over the constantly shifting dunes and tall drifts of sea oats that separated the houses from the beach, making access to the ocean easier. Like the houses, most were in the “arrogantly shabby” mode of the island, and some were wobblier than others. This particular one was pretty wobbly, creaking underfoot, its supports as cockeyed and insubstantial-looking as a smashed spider’s legs.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” she said, then she seemed to realize that she was literally pulling him along, and she slowed down and dropped his hand.

Joe was surprised at how keenly he felt the loss of those warm, silky-skinned fingers.

“Just a typical Friday night at home,
hmm
?”

Her mouth twisted a bit as she glanced up at him. “For my family? Oh, yeah.”

For a moment, the issue hung in the balance. Then, because her voice carried the ring of truth, and because he’d much rather be heading down toward the ocean with her than be back there sorting out her family anyway, he let the matter go.

“I don’t quite get the setup,” he said, feeling some of the tension start to leave his shoulders and neck as the night enveloped them like a whisper-soft blanket. For one of the few times in the past week, he was enjoying something. And what he was enjoying was, quite simply, her company. “Do they all live there together?”

Nicky made a face. “Not usually. But we’re having sort of a . . . family crisis, and everybody’s kind of circling the wagons right now.”

They were walking side by side now, and he was loath to ruin the companionable mood so soon by launching into the argument that he knew he was going to have to have with her. Besides, he was curious. “What kind of crisis?”

“You mean you haven’t heard? I thought everybody on the island knew.”

He shrugged. “I’m a newcomer. I’m out of the loop.”

“Yes, you would be. Well . . .” Her voice trailed off as they reached the peak of the walkway, and the sea, dark and wild in the light of the rising moon, came into view. The tide was coming in, and waves thundered toward shore like rows of galloping black horses with tossing white manes. The roar was hypnotic. The wind—it was too strong to be called a breeze—hit Joe in the face. It smelled and tasted briny, like oysters. It caught his tie and sent it flapping off to the side.

Nicky’s glorious hair blew all over the place, whipping around her face, getting in her mouth, and she paused to deal with it. Joe watched with some pleasure as she pulled a strand away from her lips, then caught the top section of it up and held it back with one hand. Etched by pale moonlight, her profile was as fine and delicate as a cameo’s, except no cameo he had ever seen in his life had possessed such long lashes—or such full, seductive lips.

Watching them part, he felt his body tighten and wrenched his eyes away.

“Livvy—my sister—is getting a divorce.”

It took him a second to get his mind back in gear again so that he was actually able to make sense of her words.

“And she’s pregnant,” she continued, “and her husband’s being a real prick, and she’s having a really hard time dealing with everything. So she moved back in with my mother and Harry. Harry’s pretty much horrified by the whole situation, and does his best to stay out of the way, but Uncle Ham and Uncle John have been really supportive. They actually live in Savannah, but they’ve been spending a lot of time at Twybee Cottage lately to help with Livvy—and because Uncle Ham’s going to be opening a restaurant here. He owns Hamilton House in Savannah, you know.”

There was an unmistakable touch of pride in her voice as she said that last sentence.

“I heard.” Hamilton House was one of the best-known restaurants in the region, as Joe had learned while having everyone who’d been present at the Old Taylor Place on the night of Karen Wise’s murder checked out. Hamilton James had been described to him variously as a highly respected businessman, a temperamental artiste of the kitchen, and a Southern aristocrat to his fingertips. His partner in life, John, was also his partner in the restaurant business, as well as being his accountant and, by all accounts, a much less combustible type.

“Plus, my mother’s having a small crisis of her own, because she thinks she’s suffering from psychic’s block, as she calls it. She hasn’t been able to get through to the Other Side properly for a while now, and it’s making her slightly nuts.”

Joe thought about that for a second.

“So if the psychic hotline’s down, as it were, how was she able to talk to Tara Mitchell’s ghost on your TV show the other night?” He did his best to keep the whole “got ya” vibe out of his voice.

Apparently, he didn’t entirely succeed, because she gave him a sharp look.

“You know what? Since I’m not psychic myself, I don’t understand precisely how it works all the time, either. But if my mother said she saw Tara Mitchell, she saw Tara Mitchell. My mother is many things, but she is
not
a liar.”

Combustibility must run in the James family genes,
Joe thought, with a wry glance down at his now-bristling companion. Wasn’t there some saying about fiery hair equaling a fiery heart (which, for his money, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing)?

The thing about playing with fire, though, was that it was way too easy to end up getting burned. . . .

Which, he reminded himself firmly, was why he was opting not to play.

“Hold on. You’re putting words in my mouth here. I never said she was. I only asked the same question any other reasonable human being would.”

That earned him another sharp look.

“Just because
you
don’t believe in ghosts doesn’t mean they don’t exist, you know.”

Joe thought of Brian, who was, fortunately, nowhere in evidence at the moment. “Believing in ghosts is a pretty big stretch for a guy like me. What can I say? I need proof.”

They reached the end of the boardwalk then, and the white beach stretched before them like a pale highway. The moon hung just above the horizon, big and round as a hubcap and the color of milk in an inky sky. Its reflection shimmered on top of the waves like the squiggle of icing on a snack cake. A sprinkling of stars peeped through a layer of shredded gray clouds.

“Careful.” Joe paused to let Nicky proceed down the steps. She hesitated at the top, one hand on the rail, the other still holding back her hair as she glanced cautiously up and down the beach. It wasn’t quite empty. He could see, in the distance, outlined by moonlight, a couple walking shoulder to shoulder, and a woman jogging while her dog—something big, a Lab, maybe—raced in and out of the surf.

But it was deserted enough so that for all intents and purposes, they were now totally alone.

That was not necessarily a thought he needed to be having, Joe told himself. The problem was, though, he
was
having it, having thoughts about making some moves, about doing something concrete about this attraction he felt for her, which wasn’t doing a thing but getting hotter and more difficult to resist with every moment that he spent in her company. He wanted her: There was the truth of it. And the thing was, going after what he wanted seemed to be hardwired into his nature.

Sleeping with her would do nothing but complicate his life, which was way too complicated already.

There were lots of women—lots of nice, pretty, local women—who’d given him every indication that they would be willing to share his bed anytime he felt the urge. Taking one of them up on it would be a whole hell of a lot easier. It would be the smart, safe, get-your-life-back-on-its-new-peaceful-track choice.

He had some control: The excitement junkie in him didn’t have to win out.

Then Nicky glanced around at him, and just looking at her blew him away. Her eyes were wide and dark, her skin luminous in the moonlight. The wind was plastering the black sweatery thing she was wearing against her body so that he could see her every exquisite line and curve. In general, he liked his women to be shaped like women, he reminded himself in a desperate bid to keep from being totally bedazzled: big boobs, nice round ass. And she was definitely lacking in that department. Instead, she was almost impossibly slender. Her breasts were small and firm and high, probably no more than a B-cup, certainly real. Her waist was slim, her hips almost boyish. And her legs seemed to go on forever in the clingy black pants.

Looking at her, he was reminded of Spencer Tracy’s line about Katharine Hepburn: something to the effect of “There’s not a lot of meat on her, but what there is is choice.”

And sexy. Sexy as hell.

“You’ve got your gun, right?” she asked then, and with that, the whole warm-and-fuzzy ambience that had been building up between them went straight to hell.

His brows twitched together as he met her gaze. The fear-fueled anger that had almost been overshadowed by the unexpected rush of wanting her came back in spades. Okay, the sweet little getting-to-know-you interlude was now officially over. Time to get her the hell out of Pawleys Island—and, if he had any sense at all, his life.

FOR A MOMENT, Joe didn’t say a word. He just stood there against the backdrop of night sky and waving sea oats and the peaked roof of Twybee Cottage and frowned at her. Then, still wordless, he pulled open the left side of his jacket and let her see his shoulder holster, stark against his white shirt. She could just make out the dull black gleam of a businesslike pistol peeking out of it. The sight was reassuring.

“Feel better?” he asked. His tone had a snarky quality to it that told her he was once again in a snit. Apparently, he hadn’t liked her asking about his gun.

Luckily, his mood swings weren’t her problem.

Nicky nodded tranquilly and, since she really had no choice, considering the drama that was no doubt still playing out back at the house, turned and went down the steps to the beach. The wind was much less intense once she was no longer ten feet above the earth, and she was able to let go of her hair by the time her feet touched the sand. She tucked it behind her ears, which was enough to keep it out of her face. Joe followed her down, joining her as, from habit, she started walking toward the little cluster of hotels and bars and souvenir shops that anchored the north end of the island. For as long as she could remember, there had been commercial development of one kind or another on that site; as little girls, she and Livvy had often walked down there to play games in the long-since-vanished arcade, or to get ice cream at the also long-since-vanished sandwich shop. The distant glow from the lights of the establishments there now made a small oasis of brightness in the dark.