Eeny Meany Miny Die (Cat Sinclair Mysteries) (28 page)

"I still don't get it."

"That's because you're not needy and desperate for love like Jenny, Taylor, and Corey. With your family, you've got too much of the stuff."

"I guess."

I nudged her with my elbow. "You did good, Gina."

She gave me a lopsided smile. "Looks like those kickboxing lessons paid off."

"And here I thought you were only there to ogle the instructor."

She giggled and I hugged her. "Thank you," I whispered. "You're the best and I love you in a totally un-cultish way."

She squeezed me back. "Same here, Cat. Same here."

Scarface cleared his throat. "Speaking of self-defense, it seems you got out of those lessons, Kitten. But I'll show you anyway if you want."

"Thanks but no thanks. Will won't like it."

He bent down to my level. "You're a big girl. You don't need his approval. Anyway Knight doesn't have to find out."

I sank into the direct gaze of his one eye. It wasn't so hard to understand the compelling leader thing when he looked at me like that. Sometimes I felt like I'd do anything with him.

Oh crap. It was thoughts like that which got me feeling guilty about Will. I hadn't even called him yet. I wasn't sure I wanted to. He was going to go ballistic when he saw the bullet holes in my wall.

"Whatever Cat does, Will finds out about it," Gina said. She crossed her arms beneath her boobs and narrowed her gaze at Scarface. "Leave her alone. She's already getting self-defense lessons from a pro. She doesn't need more."

Scarface backed away, hands in the air. He may have lost this battle, but I suspected he wasn't giving up the war.

I swallowed hard. "I need to call Will."

"We'll give you some privacy." Gina beckoned Scarface with a jerk of her head toward the door. "Drive me home. I'm too shaken to do it myself."

"Yes, ma'am," he drawled.

Gina kissed my cheek, then Scarface kissed my forehead. His lips lingered longer than hers. They were almost out the door when he turned back to me. He cocked the eyebrow with the scar slicing through it. "I forgot to ask what you want to collect for winning the bet."

"I haven't decided. I'll let you know."

His one eye turned smoky. The corner of his mouth lifted. "I'll be waiting."

They left and I shut the door, then locked it. I surveyed my apartment. The glass company had boarded up the window until they could replace it. Two bullet holes punctured my walls, and my lamp and its shattered bits had been relegated to the trash. It was a bit of a mess, but at least it had fared better than the time it had been torched.

I sat on the couch and called Will. He actually answered.

"Hey," I said. I felt nervous speaking to him. It was weird. Talking to him had never made me feel nervous before.

"Hey." He sounded hesitant, which only increased my anxiety.

I didn't respond, didn't say any of the things I wanted to say. I didn't know how to start.

"Cat, is there something you want?"

"Um, yeah, kind of. Are you busy right now?"

"I'm always busy."

I bit my lip. "Oh. Okay, it doesn't matter then. I'll see you—"

"Cat, stop." I heard him expel a long breath. "What I meant to say was, yes I'm busy, but I'll make time for you. Is everything okay? You don't sound like yourself."

I tried to laugh in an attempt to hold back further tears, but it came out high and fake. "Kind of. Not really." I sniffed.

"Cat? What's happened?" His urgency was a tangible thing. I could almost hear him pressing the phone closer to his ear and reaching for his car keys.

"The entire cast of Play Group has been arrested."

Silence. Then, "Even your friend?"

"Yeah."

"And you're upset about that?"

"Um, yeah. I'm also upset because they were arrested in my apartment after they tried to kill Gina and me."

He didn't speak, but there was movement on the other end. Then came a muffled "FUCK!"

"Will? Are you there?"

It was a few more moments before he came back on the line, and I figured he'd moved the phone away from his ear and pressed it against something so I couldn't hear him swearing. Fail.

"I take it you survived," he said, sounding calm.

"I did."

"And Gina?"

"She's fine too. We're not hurt."

He heaved another sigh. "Stay there. I'm coming over."

CHAPTER 16

Will folded me into his arms the moment I opened my door to him. We stood there without moving for some time, his chin resting on the top of my head and my ear pressed to his chest. His heart beat erratically, his breaths came in ragged little spurts.

Then he muttered a quiet, "They shot at you."

I pulled away, but he wasn't looking at me. He stared at my shot-up wall so fiercely I thought he'd laser another hole straight through it. The muscles in his jaw bunched. His arms tightened around me.

"They weren't very good shots," I said. "They missed us by a mile."

He didn't smile or relax. He didn't even blink. His body was as rigid as a steel brace. I took his hand and dragged him to the couch. He sat on the edge, his head bowed, his hand gripping mine as if he needed to anchor himself.

"Will, you can't babysit me every minute of the day."

He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. "I know." His gaze lifted to mine. The worry in the shadowy depths rocked me. "But I should have pulled you off the case when your car got totaled."

"My car didn't get totaled."

He arched a brow.

"Okay, it was slightly damaged. But pulling me off the case then wouldn't have changed anything."

"Because they were out to get you anyway?"

"Um, no, because I would have continued to investigate on my own."

He looked to the ceiling. "Fuck," he said on a sigh. "You're bad for my blood pressure."

I cupped his cheek and forced him to look at me again. "What I'm trying to tell you is that you can't protect me one hundred percent of the time, so stop beating yourself up over it when shit like this happens."

"I hear you, Cat, and I agree with you." He shook his head. "But that doesn't mean I like it. Nor will I stop beating myself up over it when shit like this happens. I can't. Okay?"

I kissed him. There was no solution to our problem, so instead I told him why Angel had killed Frank and how she'd gotten the others to lie for her.

"Corey lied about Angel being with him that night," I said. "And Jen lied about seeing her leaving. They were willing to go to great lengths to save her."

"Do you think Angel really did love them all like she claimed?"

"Just Corey. She was willing to sacrifice both Taylor and Jen." I told him how Angel had planted misleading evidence among Frank's things. "They stuck by her until I told them that. I think her betrayal shattered them, but I had to tell them. It was the only way to get them to abandon her and let us go."

"Thank God," he muttered.

"Poor Jenny. She always needed someone strong in her life. She wasn't very good on her own."

"Maybe she'll change after this and rely less on others."

"Maybe."

"Let's not talk about them anymore. I've got other ideas." He kissed my throat, my ear. It wasn't long before we were making love on the couch. Will was
very
attentive to my needs and took his time worshiping my body. I liked to think I gave as good as I got too.

Afterward, as I lay on top of him all loose-limbed and drowsy, he stopped rubbing the back of my neck and said, "Cat, I want to ask you something."

The serious note in his voice worried me. "Does this have something to do with how things have been between us lately?"

He nodded. "Do you remember when I thought you were out all night, and then you said it was none of my business if you were?"

I really, really didn't like where this was going. "I was being snappy. Forget it."

"I can't." He sat up, dislodging me. I settled beside him. "I know you felt like I was smothering you, but that's not why I wanted to know what you'd been doing."

It wasn't? "Did you want to know because you're my boss and I was going to be late to work?"

He smiled. "No." The smile slipped away. "I wanted to know because I'm in a relationship with you. Or I think—hope—I am. That's what people in a relationship do. They tell each other what they're doing, where they're going, that sort of thing. Not because they're keeping an eye on each other out of jealousy or possessiveness, but because they
want
to share. It's what being a couple is all about."

"Okay."

"I didn't say it at the time, because I knew it would freak you out."

"No. No, it wouldn't. It's okay, Will. I promise I'll share more."

"It doesn't change the fact that you were freaked out when I asked."

I bit my lip. He was right. I'd jumped to the conclusion that he was smothering me, wanting to keep tabs on me rather than simply sharing. I felt bad and I wished I could change my reaction. Now that I thought back on it, that was when our problems had started. He'd wanted to be more involved in my life, and I'd pushed him away.

He tugged my hair back from my forehead. "Cat, I know that I care about you more than you care for me."

"That's not true."

He put a finger to my lips. "It is. That's why I didn't elaborate at the time. It would expose how much I wanted to be in a proper relationship with you, and I guess I was worried it would only push you further away."

It was scary how well he knew me.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "So…where does that leave us now?"

"That's up to you. You tell me what you want. If you want me to back off completely, I will, even though it will kill me. But I hope that's not what you want."

I melted into his soft brown eyes. How could a girl not after being told that? "I don't want this to end," I said, stroking his thigh with my fingernails. "That's all I do know right now. Is that enough?"

He gave me that crooked smile of his and I melted a little more. "Of course it is. I know you don't feel the same intensity for me that I feel for you, and it's okay. I can wait. There's no rush."

I kissed him thoroughly, completely, and he kissed me back. For a moment I was lost in the kiss. I could feel his intensity humming through his body.

He was right when he said I wasn't ready, but I didn't subscribe to the theory that I didn't feel the same for him that he felt for me. He'd once said it was common for one person in a relationship to have stronger feelings than the other, but I wasn't sure that applied to us. It certainly applied to the Play Group cast. Angel claimed to love her friends, but she didn't worship them to the same level that they worshipped her. The same with many of Gina's relationships, and even that of Clive Bankler and—

I broke the kiss. "Oh my God! It's his girlfriend!"

Will stared at me through lazy, hooded eyes. "I was thinking about how I was going to lick my way down to your thighs just now. What the hell were
you
thinking about?"

"Bankler."

"Am I really that bad a kisser?"

I thumped him lightly on the arm. "Concentrate. This is a big case and worth a lot of money."

He blinked away the sexiness in his eyes and straightened, dislodging me entirely onto the couch beside him. "Then we need to stop touching. Go on. What's your theory?"

"Bankler's been feeding the information about the shipments to his girlfriend. He's probably been doing it without even realizing."

"How?"

"After sex or maybe during it. Some time when his guard is down."

"I think even Bankler would know when a girl's pumping him for information while she's, um, pumping him."

"Then maybe she searched through his computer while he slept. We need to watch her, find out who her contacts are, and see if she's spending more money lately."

"Yes, Boss."

I gave him a withering glare.

"So what made you think it was her?" he asked.

"She didn't seem to like him as much as he did her. She was always doing something else while he spoke sweet nothings to her over the phone. I couldn't hear her side of the conversations on his office phone, but he did a lot of the talking. In fact, she must have hardly spoken at all, because he never shut up to listen. I wonder if she put the phone down and let him ramble on while she did something else."

"Maybe she didn't like that side of their relationship."

"Maybe. You don't think that's odd?"

"No, but I'm not a woman."

"Being a woman, I think it's extremely odd that she'd put up with that bullshit if she didn't want to listen to it. There has to be a reason. Besides, it explains why a girl who looks like her is dating a guy like him."

"Harsh."

"Yet true."

He nodded slowly as he stared at me without quite seeing me. It was what he did when he was deep in thought. Then he suddenly grasped my face and kissed me. "You're too clever, Cat."

"You should give me a raise."

"I've already got a raise for you." He pulled me onto his lap.

"Uh-huh." I smiled against his mouth. "There it is right there."

Half an hour later we showered together. Four hours later we'd gathered enough evidence to prove that Bankler's girlfriend had stolen company secrets from him. We took the information to Slim and received a fat check for our efforts. A couple more hours after that we celebrated in bed with hot sex. The 'C' word—commitment—wasn't mentioned again, but I knew it would rear its ugly head again one day.

I just never could have foreseen how.

THE END

Look out for the third Cat Sinclair Mystery Novel, coming soon.

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