Bad Girl by Night (7 page)

This particular June morning was like all the rest—a raspberry muffin purchased yesterday at Beth Anne’s made a sweet breakfast, and as she carried her coffee cup to the sink afterward, she bent to pet the large gray angora cat on the floor. “Morning, Oliver.”

He was a serious cat, the kind who looked as if he ran the place—but with her, he was a little needy, hungering for her attention when no one else was around. She smiled down at him, pondering how they both sometimes wore . . . disguises.

But the smiled faded as fast as it had come. She didn’t like thinking about that. At times—like now—it even turned her stomach a little. She had a love/hate relationship with her secret life, her secret Saturday nights in Traverse City. In one sense, when viewed from a distance, it seemed a grand, exciting, naughty, and wonderful thing. But in another . . . it wasn’t exactly a
pretty
secret. Most secrets, she supposed, weren’t. It was the sort of thing that, in some moments, she couldn’t believe she’d ever done—let alone numerous times—and she wasn’t sure why she did it.

Well, wait. That wasn’t true. She
knew
. On a physical level. She did it when she needed sex.

But she still wasn’t sure why she couldn’t find a nice guy and have nice,
normal
sex like other people.

She shook her head, trying to clear it. Then took a quick shower and, afterward, went to get dressed. As she reached toward her underwear drawer, wearing a towel, she noticed a tiny swath of red-and-pink lace sticking out of
another
drawer—her lingerie drawer. She opened it, shoved the panties all the way in, and shut it, quickly. Almost like . . . if she didn’t look too closely, the drawer wouldn’t exist. How could she take such delight in something that at other times made her feel so . . . shameful?

She gave a little shiver, fetched a pair of more functional undies—cotton, pink with black polka dots—then threw on a plain black bra, a pair of jeans, and a University of Michigan T-shirt. She hadn’t gone to school there. She hadn’t gone to college anywhere. But her friend Dana had—and the shirt had been a gift one Christmas about ten years ago. As for the jeans, she wore them every day in the shop, even in summer, since her work was messy, dusty, and she could wipe her hands on her thighs without the dirt showing too much. Swiping up a navy blue elastic band from her dresser, she pulled her hair back into a low ponytail, another practical move for work.

She spent the next two hours laboring on an old-fashioned crib. Dana—who’d married Hank Willis, a Turnbridge fireman, and who also worked part-time in her mother’s antiques store up the street—was pregnant with her first baby. The crib would be a gift at the shower Carly and Beth Anne planned to throw this fall before the bundle of joy arrived in November.

Hmm. Baby showers. Used to be bridal showers. Carly had thrown or attended more than her fair share.

Yet as she reached for one of her father’s old bench planes and began meticulously smoothing a slab of oak, her mind drifted from showers to . . . the particular pair of panties she’d just seen upstairs. To the last time she’d worn them. Two guys. The memory nearly stole her breath.
Concentrate on the wood. Get lost in the wood.

Just then, someone waving through the shop’s front window caught her eye. Tiffany Cleary was fourteen and often came by just to hang out and pet Oliver. Now she passed by the large pane of glass that said WINTERBERRY’S WOOD CRAFTS AND FINE FURNITURE in gold lettering. Carly lifted a hand to wave in return, but then looked back to her work.

Hell, maybe she should have stopped, let Tiffany in, even though it was still long before time to open. If she had, her mind wouldn’t have turned instantly back to the events of her last trip to Traverse City, nearly a month ago. The sex had been . . . unbelievable. And a little unsettling in moments because of that Jake guy and her sense that he somehow knew there was more to her than met the eye. But it had come to nothing, which had left only the indescribably hot pleasure of the evening. The problem was—she didn’t want to remember it right now.

Sometimes she did. Sometimes at night. When it was dark, when she was in bed, sometimes she reached between her legs and stroked herself to orgasm, and in those moments the extreme memories of her wild night seemed like a supreme victory in her quiet life, and they were just the thing to help her come.

But during the day, in the shop, working in the window, when she was the very epitome of the simple, down-to-earth Carly Winters everyone here knew—she didn’t want to think about it then. She didn’t even want to be aware any of it had ever actually happened. Had she really put on a sinfully sexy dress and driven two hours to fuck a stranger? Or, in the last instance, more than one?

Fuck
. She hardly ever used that word, or others like it, outside of those nights—even in her mind. Why had she thought it just now? Maybe because what she’d done with Jake and Colt couldn’t accurately be categorized as anything
but
fucking.

Sex with one guy? She could be pretty damn dirty and aggressive with one lone guy and still, afterward, tell herself it was simply sex. No harm done, free country, woman with needs . . . all that. But there was no making the threesome less than what it was, no matter how much she might wish her brain would let her water it down, sugarcoat it. She’d fucked two guys at once; she’d been crazed and hungry and lusty with them. Nope, that wasn’t really something she could just call casual sex. It had been wild fucking, plain and simple.

And even as much as the memory shamed her in her real world, at the same time, it was making her panties wet. Remembering the way she’d sat sprawled in that chair, legs parted as far as humanly possible for them. Remembering the heat in Jake’s blue eyes when he seemed to almost look through her—and the way he’d pinned her to the bed, and then a little later rammed forcefully into her from behind. She let out a breath, glad her T-shirt was loose, since her breasts felt a little achy now and her nipples would surely be visible through anything tighter, even through her bra.

It was actually almost a relief when the ten o’clock hour rolled around and she walked to the door to turn the Open sign toward the window. It was a Tuesday, one of the quieter days of the week during summer, but still, already a few cars were starting to park along the curb outside.

Turnbridge was a rare small town these days. No Walmart or outlet mall had cropped up to lure customers away from smaller businesses, so Main Street remained adorned with a drugstore, hardware store, bank, and more. At the same time, however, Turnbridge was known for its crafts and antiques. Just across the street from her stood a specialty yarn and bead shop in a circa 1920 building, a homemade toy store occupied the old Five and Dime up the block, and Debbie Cleary, Tiffany’s mom, had opened a successful scrapbooking store in a small house around the corner on Maple. Farther up Main, storefronts gave way to old Victorian homes, and many of those had also been turned into antiques shops or craft stores, Dana’s girlhood home among them. Dana’s mother still lived upstairs, but she’d transformed the ground floor into a friendly store, each room filled with wonderful old pieces of furniture, candlesticks, frames, and collectibles.

Carly’s shop didn’t get as much foot traffic as many of the stores did. Although she created smaller pieces—bread boxes, keepsake boxes, trays, checkerboards—most of her offerings were large, pricy items like tables, chairs, and bookshelves that didn’t draw in as many casual shoppers from the sidewalk. But that suited her fine. At the end of the day, she still made enough to keep the business running, and even had a healthy savings account for lean years. So it wasn’t as if turning the lock on the door and opening the shop today meant a barrage of customers rushing in—it meant only that she was no longer officially alone in her private world. And most days, that wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but today, maybe it was.

At noon, another ritual—she stepped in the back room and made a call to Schubert’s up the street. A small, family-friendly restaurant during the day, more of a pub at night, the place served simple fare like burgers and sandwiches. Carly got her lunch there almost every day until winter came, when she started “hibernating” a little more, preferring to go upstairs and grab something from the fridge. Otherwise, she liked the opportunity to get out, take a walk, breathe some fresh air.

“Schubert’s,” answered Frank Schubert himself, a friendly fifty-something man she’d known her whole life.

“Hi, it’s Carly, calling in my lunch order.”

“Ham and swiss on white, light mayo?” he asked.

She even tended to order the same thing every day. “You got it.” But she didn’t mind if that seemed boring. For her, such rituals were a way of giving her life structure, keeping everything in order.

“Ready in five,” he said, and she told him she’d be there soon.

After flipping around a CLOSED FOR LUNCH, BE BACK SOON sign in the window, she locked the front door and began her journey up the street. It was hot out—in the eighties—with a bright sun beating down from a clear blue sky. A soft breeze kept the day pleasant, however, and as Carly took her daily stroll up the sidewalk, she saw Beth Anne wave from the bakery window, where she was probably preparing for a lunch break herself. Then Mrs. Castellini, a friend of her mother’s, beeped and waved as her big old Buick rolled past. Shoppers dotted Main Street—a few of them heading into the Bear Den for lunch, and the Moosewood Deli seemed to be hopping for a Tuesday, every umbrella-covered table in the small outdoor seating area occupied.

Schubert’s sat at a four-way stop, the front facade on the diagonal, as if one corner of the building had been cut off—and the same fading, scripted SCHUBERT’S sign had hung over the door for Carly’s entire life. A blast of airconditioning hit her as she walked inside. A couple of the tables in the small dining area were filled, and a few of the stools at the bar were taken by town cops in navy blue uniforms.

Frank, gray-haired and balding, stood behind the bar chatting with the policemen, so she stepped up between two vacant stools where he’d see her.

He smiled in her direction, reached beneath the counter, and pulled out a brown bag containing her sandwich and a bag of chips. “Four ninety-nine,” Frank said, hitting a few buttons on the old-fashioned cash register mounted behind the mahogany bar. And as she reached into her purse, extracting a five from her wallet, he resumed talking to the nearest cop. “Couldn’t find a nicer little town than Turnbridge, if you ask me,” he said. “Trust me—after a couple months here, you’ll never want to leave.”

As Carly passed the money to Frank, he said to her, “This here’s the new officer the town just hired, Jake Lockhart.” And when, two stools away, the uniformed man turned toward her, it took her only a second to realize—he was her blue-eyed stranger.

It was like a punch in the gut that left her light-headed. Jake, looking shockingly staid—even if just as handsome—in a police uniform, tilted his head slightly, appearing a little puzzled even as he clearly began to recognize her, too. Shit. Shit oh shit oh shit.

“Nice to meet you,” she said quickly, then glanced away and grabbed up her bag, saying to Frank, “Keep the penny.”

She was turning to escape, her heart thudding painfully against her chest, when the new town cop said, “Desiree?”

Double shit. She just stood there, her face going numb.

“No sir, this here’s Carly Winters,” Frank corrected him. “Runs Winterberry’s up the street—you’ve probably seen it. She makes some beautiful furniture—you oughta stop in, check out her work.”

Jake blinked, met her gaze. And if she were a better actress, she could have appeared entirely unaffected, or even bemused, the way someone did when sincerely mistaken for someone else. But the brief window of time for that had fled and she knew, without doubt, he could see in her eyes that he
hadn’t
been mistaken, and that she was just a liar—a liar with a very different identity from the one she’d presented to him, a liar who’d fucked two men she didn’t know just as easily as she’d walked in here to get her lunch.

She swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat, and his eyes never left hers as he said, “My mistake. Sorry.”

She gave her head a light shake, all she could manage just now. “No problem,” she replied too softly, barely able to draw breath into her lungs. Then she forced out a quick, “See ya, Frank,” and made a beeline for the door.

She couldn’t feel her legs, nor the checkerboard tile floor beneath her feet. She leaned on the big wooden door with all her remaining strength and burst out into bright sunlight, wanting to run.

But running would only call attention to herself. And there was nowhere to run anyway.
He was in her town. Where she lived. Where everyone knew her.
This was her worst nightmare come true, the most horrific thing she could imagine.
This can’t be happening. It just can’t.

She walked quickly, her stomach churning, her breath still shallow. How the hell had this happened? He was Turnbridge’s new police officer? Not a pilot. Not a photographer. A
cop
. She’d been completely off the mark with that. But it hardly mattered. She had much bigger problems to worry about.

He would tell people.
Of course
he would tell people. The other cops. Guys loved to brag, after all. And God knew she’d given him something to brag about. She could almost hear the conversation already. “You know that girl Carly? Well, I met her a month ago, but she claimed her name was Desiree and she fucked my friend and me senseless in a hotel room. Yeah, both of us. Her idea. She couldn’t get enough.” She feared she might vomit.

God, it was too damn hot out here. The sun suddenly made her woozier than she already was. She stared at the evenly spaced lines in the sidewalk as she trudged onward, trying to keep her balance.

“Carly, you okay? You look kind of . . . freaked-out.”