How to Score (9 page)

But the janitor hadn’t been scheduled to come last night—and Ms. Arnette insisted on cleaning the two master bedrooms herself every Wednesday. Frowning, Sammi headed up the servants’ stairs, the wooden steps creaking underfoot. Sure enough, the ringing grew louder as she reached the second floor. She followed it to the master wing and into Mr. Phelps’s bedroom.

It was the chrome alarm on the bedside table—the expensive JAZ alarm from the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, the show in Paris that had originated the art deco movement.

The hair on her arm stood up. She didn’t believe in ghosts, but this was a little spooky. She released the velvet rope and stepped into the room. She turned slowly, looking for evidence that the room had been disturbed. Everything seemed to be in its usual place.

She walked to the bedside table, punched in the button to silence the clock, then peered at the thin red alarm hand. It was set on 8:50.

Sammi frowned. It had to have been set this morning, because otherwise, it would have gone off last night. It was two days before Ms. Arnette’s regularly scheduled cleaning day, and the woman rigidly adhered to her schedule. It was odd that she’d been in here this morning.

Oh, well. She must have noticed some extra dust or something and accidentally set the alarm clock while cleaning it.

Sammi turned to leave the room, then stopped as something else caught her eye. The corner of the red wool bedspread on the side away from the door was rumpled. Sammi walked over to straighten it. As she smoothed the cover over the pillow, she found a four-inch-long white hair—the same color and length as Ms. Arnette’s hair—on the pillowcase.

That was strange. Not inexplicable, since Ms. Arnette cleaned the room, but unusual. Sammi brushed it off, then left the room, flipping off the light and refastening the velvet rope behind her.

L
uke? It’s Sammi.”

“Well, hello.”

The deep voice of her life coach resonated through the phone, sending a shiver of attraction down Sammi’s spine. She nudged Joe’s paws aside and plopped down beside him on her living room sofa. “How’s your cold?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s getting better.”

She adjusted the phone to her ear. “I know I’m only supposed to call you on Saturdays and Thursdays, but you told me during our first conversation that I could call anytime I needed to, and, well, I’ve had a rough day.” She paused and drew a breath. “Do you have time to talk?”

“Uh—yeah. I have fifteen minutes until my next client calls. What’s up?”

She rubbed Joe’s head. The dog gave her a slurpy kiss. “I injured another man.”

A beat of silence pulsed through the phone. “Oh, yeah? What happened?”

“Well, I was following your instructions, and… ” Sammi relayed the whole messy chain of events, ending with the spilled coffee. “Why do I always do this to men I’m attracted to?”

Another pause echoed through the line. “You were attracted to him?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What, exactly, did you find attractive?”

It was oddly disturbing, talking about Chase to Luke. She uncurled her legs and rose from the sofa. Joe jumped down beside her. “Well… for starters, he was tall and dark and handsome.” She felt attracted all over again, just picturing him. “He was a total hunk.”

“A, um, hunk.”

“Uh-huh. But the thing that really got me were his eyes.”

“His eyes?”

“Yeah.” She crossed the room and smiled, remembering them. “They were brown and kind of shaped like George Clooney’s, and he had this way of looking at me that made my stomach seize up.”

The life coach cleared his throat. “In a good way, I hope.”

“A very good way. And it wasn’t just physical. I liked other things about him, too.”

“Such as?”

She stopped by the window and gazed out at the night. “He was self-confident and intelligent, and he likes to run, just like I do. He has a sense of humor, and he was easy to talk to, and… well, I liked everything about him. Except for the fact he’s an FBI agent.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“They carry guns. And people who carry guns sooner or later end up using them, and someone gets shot.” She turned away from the window. “Believe me, I know. My father was a police officer, and he was paralyzed by a bullet.”

“Oh, wow. That had to be tough.”

“It was awful. Beyond awful. But even before he was shot, his job was a problem. Mom worried every time he went to work. When he worked nights, she used to sit up, listening to a police scanner.” Sammi strode into the kitchen. “And we all had to put up with his bad moods when he got home. Mom said he dealt with crummy people and depressing things all day, so he brought all that negativity and stress home with him.”

“Lots of jobs involve stress.”

“I know, I know, but it’s not usually life-or-death stress. And most jobs don’t make people cynical and distant and curt.”

“Your dad was cynical and distant and curt?”

She felt guilty admitting it. She’d loved her dad, and talking this way felt somehow disloyal. “Yeah. He didn’t mean to be, but sometimes—a lot of the time—he was.” She sighed and opened the fridge. “And then there was the whole law-enforcement-officer-personality thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know—the whole authority-figure thing. A lot of cops are bossy and controlling and rigid.” Sammi stared at the place where the yogurt used to be. Chloe had apparently cleaned her out.

“Sounds to me like you’re kind of rigid yourself, slapping labels on an entire career field of people.”

“Ouch.” Was she? Maybe so. “All I know is what I’ve seen.” She found a mandarin orange fruit cup. Closing the fridge, she ripped off the lid, opened the silverware drawer, and extracted a spoon.

“Well, you’re not going to see this guy again, so it doesn’t really matter.”

Sammi froze, the spoon in her hand. “Who said I wasn’t going to see him again?”

A long pause echoed through the phone. “Well, from what you just said, I assumed you don’t plan any further contact.”

Sammi stuck the spoon in the fruit, strangely upset by the thought.

“Do you?” he prompted.

“I guess not,” she said with considerable reluctance. “I didn’t get his number. I tried to look him up, but he’s not listed in the phone directory, and when I Googled him, I found nothing. Nothing at all. Which I thought was kind of weird, but then I figured it must be some kind of FBI thing.”

“Yeah. Probably so.” His voice was low and almost gruff. “Let’s move on to the real issue here, which is you injuring another man. What were you thinking right before you spilled coffee on him?”

“Well, right before I sloshed it on his hand, I was thinking, ‘Don’t spill it! Don’t spill it!’ ”

“That’s your problem, right there. Negative thoughts get negative results. Worrying about something makes you choke, and that makes it more likely to happen.”

“With my track record, I have good reason to worry.”

“You’ve got to change the tape in your head. Athletes train themselves to visualize the results they want—catching the pass, making the touchdown, kicking the ball between the goalposts. See yourself winning and that’s what you’ll do.”

“All of a sudden you sound like a real coach.”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, I have a sports background.”

“I know. I looked you up on the Internet.” She scooped out a spoonful of tiny oranges. “I was hoping to find a picture of you.”

“You were? Why?”

Was it her imagination, or was some chemistry brewing over the phone line? She was tempted to try to elicit some kind of inappropriate response from him. She leaned against the counter. “I was curious. Don’t you ever wonder what your clients look like?”

“Well—unless their appearance is an issue for them, it isn’t an issue to me.”

“So you’re not at all curious what I look like?”

He paused. “I don’t, uh, think that’s any of my business, unless it’s something you want to address.”

I’d like to address what you look like.
The thought took her by surprise. What was going on with her? She hadn’t been attracted to a man for months, yet here she was, having simultaneous hots for a law-enforcement officer she’d just met and a life coach she’d never seen.

“When was the first time this man-bashing problem started?” he asked.

“After I broke up with my boyfriend.” She carried the fruit cup to the breakfast nook and sat down at the table. “About a year and a half ago.”

“So what happened?”

“I caught him with another woman.” She stared down at the orange slices, her chest heavy at the memory.

“As you said earlier, ouch.”

Sammi smiled. “Yeah.”

“So then you started hurting men before they could hurt you?”

“Is that what you think, too?” Sammi frowned. “My sister says that’s the reason, but I don’t buy it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s too corny. I can’t believe my subconscious is that hokey.”

In his living room across town, Chase started to laugh. He put his hand across the phone and caught himself. He was deliberately speaking in a slower cadence and a higher pitch than normal so that she wouldn’t recognize his voice, but laughs were harder to disguise. He had to watch himself on the phone, because she was too observant by half.

He cleared his throat. “So tell me about this boyfriend. What was his name?”

“Lance.”

“Lance? As in lance a boil?”

It was Sammi’s turn to laugh. “Exactly like that.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“In New Orleans. I moved there to work on a historic-home-preservation project after Hurricane Katrina.”

Chase strode across the room and gazed out onto his terrace. “And what does Sir Lance-a-boil do?”

“He’s a real-estate developer. We met at a charity fund-raiser. He was very handsome and clever and charming.”

A little zing of something sharp shot through Chase. It couldn’t be jealousy. That would be ridiculous. He silently listed the reasons why. One: he hardly knew her. Two: she was off-limits for a relationship. Three: she was screwed up enough to hire a life coach, and he liked women who had their act together.

All the same, hearing her describe the assets of this jerk bothered him. He paced across his living room. “So it was largely a physical attraction.”

“I guess. I met him under pretty emotional circumstances. The Katrina aftermath was just enormous, and I was working all hours, and everything was chaotic… ” Her voice trailed off. “I think I was looking for someone or something to hold on to.” She paused again. “The truth is, things were never all that great physically.”

The confession irrationally pleased him. “Why was that?”

Silence beat through the phone. “Well, it’s kind of personal.”

“If a topic makes you uncomfortable, that’s usually a clue that you need to talk about it.” That was always the case with suspects, anyway. The things they shied away from discussing were usually the very things that would make or break the case. “A coach can’t tape a player’s leg if he doesn’t know where it hurts.”

He paced his living room and waited. No information was forthcoming. “So were there… technical difficulties?” he prodded.

He heard something that sounded like a scraping chair. “Yeah.” She paused. When she spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper. “He said I wasn’t sexy enough to keep him turned on.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. He started having problems, and—”

“He let you think it was your fault?”

“Yeah.”

Chase scowled at his wall. “And you bought this bull?”

“Well… yeah. At the time, anyway. I’ve done a lot of reading since then, and now I think he had other issues, like drinking too much, and maybe feeling guilty that he was cheating on me—”

“Whoa. How soon did he start cheating on you?”

“I think it was pretty early on. Maybe even the whole time.”

Chase stifled an oath. Man, this guy was a first-class a-hole.

“He wasn’t the only one with technical difficulties,” she continued.

Chase pulled his brows together. “You had them, too?”

“Yeah. I never… ” She broke off. “I mean, the whole time I was with him, I never could… ”

He read between the lines. “Never?”

“No.”

“How did he respond to that?”

“He… didn’t. I don’t think he noticed.”

“He just never happened to notice that you didn’t get off?”

“He seemed to think I did.” Her voice was low and so soft it was hard to hear. “Afterward, he’d say something like ‘That was amazing,’ and I’d say something like ‘Mmphff,’ and he’d just assume I thought it was amazing, too.”

Stupid cocky bastard. “Why didn’t you speak up?”

“I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.” She gave a mirthless laugh. “Which is pretty ironic, considering that I started physically hurting other guys after we broke up.”

“When did that begin?”

“Eight or nine months later, when I finally started dating again. A friend set me up with her brother. I accidentally knocked over a chair, and he stumbled over it. He broke a rib.”

Chase winced.

“A few months later, I was climbing the stadium stairs at a football game. A woman stepped into the aisle in front of me, and I abruptly stopped. My date plowed into me, then lost his footing and fell down the steps.”