Sweet as Sin (11 page)

“It’s after 2 a.m., Liv. He’s been gone for hours.

He won’t answer his phone. He’s left me, I know it.”

Livvy rubbed her eyes. Her baby sister was a melodramatic mess. When they found Tow’s

overnight bag, Livvy had taken it as a good sign.

Andrea had nearly collapsed with her wailing. She had barely stopped all night and Livvy had a raging headache because of it. The living room was dark except for the muted TV, and the flickering light aggravated her throbbing temples.

Curled on the chair by the window, Andrea watched the empty street. She cradled her cell phone in the hope Tow would call. She’d already irritated her coworkers by calling the hospital three times to check the patient list for his name.

He wasn’t in jail. He wasn’t in the morgue.

“Was I being that bad about the wedding?”

Andrea looked at her with swollen red eyes.

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Livvy longed to lie to her but knew it wouldn’t be doing her any favors. “You are a bit of a Bridezilla, Andy. Just stop trying to make everything so perfect. You’re marrying the man you love. That’s what’s important.”

“Not if he’s left me. I chased him off. And he took your boyfriend with him.”

Livvy opened her mouth to deny that John was her boyfriend but stopped. What was he to her?

He wasn’t her lover. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He wasn’t a boy at all. What was their relationship?

Other than neighbor, she couldn’t answer

completely. But she’d never had Mr. Truman’s hands in her panties nor kissed Ethel Lowenstein with blazing passion, and they’d been her neighbors for years.

She’d been disappointed when she realized John had left without saying anything.

Disappointed and a little hurt. He couldn’t have stuck his head out the door and told her he was leaving? Livvy assumed he was with Tow only because the two had disappeared at the same time.

But where could they have disappeared to?

Where did most men go when they had a fight with their girlfriends? Was Tow drowning his sorrows in some woman’s cleavage right now?

What about John?

Livvy shook her head. No, he’d given her no reason to be suspicious and she wouldn’t doubt 116

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him again. But Andrea’s panic was starting to rub off.

Andrea sprang from her chair and whipped the curtain back. A silent police cruiser pulled to a stop in front of the house. Andrea darted out the front door before Leo could climb from the car and walk to the passenger side. Livvy watched from the porch, hands clamped over her mouth.

Leo held his palm up to stop Andrea from

grabbing the back door handle.

“He’s too drunk to drive. I’m getting off shift so I just brought him home.” He looked at Andrea sadly before raising his eyes to Livvy. “I brought them both.”

When he opened the door, Tow literally fell out of the cruiser. He scrambled awkwardly before rising. Andrea tried to help, which made things worse. Finally on two feet, he stood wavering and Livvy saw his face. Bright and smiling drunkenly, he had the beginnings of a black eye and an obviously bloodied nose.

“Andy, I got in a bar fight! How cool is that?”

Andrea burst into tears and threw herself at him. He fell back into the cruiser door but wrapped his arms around her. Leo stared at Livvy rather than at the couple beside him. Andrea led Tow through the yard and Livvy’s eyes locked on the darkened interior of the car.

Where is he?

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The night turned suddenly cool and she blamed her trembling on the weather. A slight wind molded her long nightshirt to her body. She crossed her arms, her thumbnail between her teeth to hide her quivering lips.

“What happened?” she asked Leo.

“I got called in to help with a fight down at the Brewster. Look, Liv, it wasn’t that bad and I didn’t want to screw Tow over. I’m not charging them with anything but they’re both way too drunk to be driving. Make sure Andrea gets Tow’s car in the morning, all right?”

Livvy pushed the windblown hair out of her eyes. There was something he wasn’t saying.

Something that filled his gaze with apprehension.

Something that made her mouth dry and her eyes wet.

John pulled himself out with much more

drunken grace than Tow had. In fact, at first glance, he didn’t look drunk at all until she looked in his eyes. Tow drunk was boisterous and happy.

John was dark and moody with a razor’s-edge glint in his eyes hinting at danger. He stepped away from the open door and leaned on the rear panel, fingertips tucked in his front pockets. He avoided her eyes.

Livvy stared at him, her breath coming fast and hard. She didn’t know this man. The John Murphy she knew created wonderful magical monsters that 118

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fought for good and justice. The man she knew kissed her tenderly and stroked her with gentle hands. She didn’t know this drunken stranger with the swollen jaw, bleeding lip and bloody knuckles peeking from his pockets.

The slam of the car door pulled her from her inspection. She inhaled and exhaled before turning her face back to Leo. His gray uniform shirt glowed silver in the faint moonlight and she fastened her eyes on his nametag. He stood, hands on his radio and ASP baton, waiting for her to look up. The concern in his eyes nearly allowed her tears to fall when she did raise her face.

“Thanks. I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Liv.” He opened his mouth but then clamped it shut and scowled at John. He took her arm and motioned his head for her to walk with him to the front of the cruiser.

She turned but only made it two steps before becoming the filling in a chest sandwich.

“Get your hands off her!”

John lunged at Leo, Leo stood firm and Livvy was caught in the middle. John’s forward motion sent her sprawling into the trooper. She was trapped between both strong male bodies, and everything slowed. She saw John draw back his fist and Leo snap his telescopic steel baton open into a fighting position. Leo’s free arm went around her shoulders from the front, John’s Inez Kelley

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around her waist from the back. The wind rushed past her ear as she fell into Leo’s badge. It bit into her cheek with a cold sharp prick. Under his shirt, his vest was rigid against her face.

“No!” Her scream paralyzed each man. She

shoved them apart. She stood between them, arms outstretched like a blockade, and prayed they wouldn’t clash again. When neither made a move, she slowly lowered her arms.

Leo took a step closer to John. “Are you asking to go to jail, asshole?”

“Leo, shut up. And put that thing away!” She pointed to Leo’s steel ASP before turning on John.

His narrowed gaze locked on the officer and an angry tic formed under his eye. Livvy had a brief flash of him getting arrested if he so much as blinked in Leo’s direction and panicked. They had to be kept apart. She shoved his chest not once, not twice but three times until he took faltering steps into the grass.

“You! Go sit down. I mean it, go!” Pointing to her porch, she turned to retrace her steps. Rather than see, she felt John start to take a step toward them. She whirled back and pushed him to the stairs. “Sit. Do not move, do you hear me? Stay put.”

“Livvy, your face. You’re hurt.” He went to cup her cheek and she slapped his hand away.

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“You should have thought about that before acting like a raging bull. Now don’t move.” She stalked back to Leo with her hands in her hair.

Leo glared at John as she approached then turned a softer gaze to her.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded and wiped her hands down her

face. The scrape stung in the night air. Leo went to touch her cheek but she stopped him with shaking fingers. “I’m fine, really.”

Leo tightened his jaw. His voice was soft and commanding. “Liv, how well do you know him?”

“He’s my neighbor.”

He looked at her with skeptical eyes.

She shuffled her feet. “We’ve been seeing each other for a little while.”

Leo locked his eyes on John behind her and whispered, “I ran him through the system. He has a record, Livvy.”

Shock smacked into her chest and she closed her eyes. The night took on a surreal quality.
This
isn’t happening. This is all a strange dream, a
nightmare
. “What kind of record?”

She didn’t recognize the calm tone coming from her mouth. How could her voice sound so normal when her brain was scattering like dust?

“I don’t know. It’s a juvenile record and sealed, but…” Leo looked directly into her face, steeling her for his words. “I tried to pull some strings off Inez Kelley

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the books. Normally it works. Not this time. I’ve never seen that happen, Liv, except in violent crimes.”

If Livvy thought she was shocked before, that sentence floored her. Unable to breathe, she wrapped her arms around her waist.
What’s
happening here? How did this go from exciting
and thrilling to bad boys, bad boys, whatcha
gonna do?

She wasn’t aware she was crying until a cold tear splashed on her cheek. Leo gripped her arm and she looked up at him. His frown was full of tender apprehension.

“Be careful, Liv.”

Chapter Five

John sat on the stone step, his face throbbing, his head spinning and his chest heavy.
I’m too old for
this shit.
Alcohol buzzed through his veins but it didn’t blind him to what was happening. The secret he’d thought long buried reached up and bit him in the ass.

Humiliation more than booze kept his head bent low. The landscaping rocks around Livvy’s small porch were polished gravel, variations of white, cream and gray with a few odd bits of color tossed in. They held his attention while he avoided seeing Livvy, seeing Livvy with the trooper, seeing Livvy learn about his shame. One dark blood-colored stone caught his eye and he picked it up, rubbing it between numb fingers.

He didn’t look up until the cruiser pulled away.

He came face to face with Livvy’s crotch. The nightshirt read Kiss Me, I’m Irish and even if she was, he doubted he could follow that direction without getting slapped.

Inch by inch, he forced his gaze up. Those wide eyes bore into his and his heart screamed.

Vory stared back at him.
Dear God, she’s my
Vory.

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“Murphy—”

“Are you afraid of me?”

She wiped her runny nose, looking over his head. “I don’t know.”

Pain stabbed him in the belly and he swallowed whatever pride he had left. He tucked the rock in his pocket and stood. He looked down into her face, with her pool-like eyes and grazed cheek—

the face he’d given a different name—and

something inside him cracked.

“Goodbye, Livvy.”

He did his damnedest to walk straight. She called out his name once but he didn’t slow. His seldom-used front door was locked and he didn’t have the key, a thought that struck him as ironically hysterical. The grass crunched under his heavy boots as he rounded the house. Deeper darkness lurked between their homes and his inebriated creative spirit also found that funny.

But the shock of seeing the real-life Vory staring at him had stolen the sarcastic laughter.

The steel toe of his boot caught on the stair tread and he fell with a curse. Swallowing something that tasted like tears, he finished the climb and went into his empty house. The ache inside needed to be filled. He just wasn’t sure how.

He’d never known how.

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John was standing in the blackness when she slipped through the door. He watched her find her way in the dark. In the filtered moonglow, her skin was almost luminescent, like an angel’s, an angel he had no right to touch, to tarnish.

“What are you doing here?”

She focused on his general location and

stepped toward him. It was eighty degrees outside but she’d put on pants. Dark sweat pants, maybe black, covered her long legs, and tiny little shoes hid her toes.
How did I never notice how small her
feet are?

“I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine, Liv. I’m drunk and I’m fine. Go home.”

Her eyes must have adjusted to the dark

because she stared at the bottle in his hand.

“You’re still drinking?”

“Yep.” Deliberately, he put the bottle to his mouth and swallowed a long pull.

“Aren’t you drunk enough?”

“Not by half
.” I still feel. It hurts. Go away.

Stay.

A timid pink tongue licked her lips and his longed to follow it. “I need to know something.

Were there…other women at the bar?”

“It’s a public bar, Liv, of course there were women there.”

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Her eyes squeezed closed and his chest panged.

It made him angry. He was many things but he wasn’t a cheater. Although how would she know that? How did he? He’d never cheated because he’d never allowed anyone to get close enough for him to cheat on them. No one until Livvy. She deserved better than him.

“You need to go, Liv. I don’t know how to be with someone like you, someone good. You just need to walk away now.”

“Why? Did you do something to make me

walk away?”

“Something? Or someone? That’s what you’re worried about, right? That I picked up some easy ass and am hiding it from you? Here’s a tip, honey.

I’d just tell you if I’d fucked someone tonight. I listened to a pissed-off drunk lawyer whine about his girlfriend and watched a ballgame with the sound off. Exciting shit in my life, huh?”

She raked her hand through her hair. “What was the fight about?”

“I dunno. It started in the back and spread out.

One minute I was watching TV, the next I was knocking teeth.”
And enjoying the hell out of it.

The burst of adrenaline soothed him more than the liquor.

“And getting brought home in a police car, can’t forget that little adventure.”

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