Bending the Rules (30 page)

He declined it in favor of the wine they were still working on and they carried their dinner to the couch. Poppy grimaced as they sat down. “I really do need to clear enough space off the table so we aren’t constantly having to balance plates on our knees.”

“I wouldn’t know how to act,” he commented and dug into his eggs. They ate in silence for a few moments, then he shot her a crooked smile. “These are great.”

He was consistently appreciative of her cooking—far beyond what it merited—and it never failed to grab at something way down deep inside of her. To counteract the sappy feeling, she assumed a motherly smile as she reached over and patted his knee.

“Yes, well, I do live for the challenge of preparing these gourmet meals.”

“Smart mouth.” His gaze on her lips, he wolfed down the last few bites, then set his plate on the floor. “I’ve got a much better use for that mouth than listening to it make fun of me.”

She dabbed her fingertip at a drip of melted butter on her plate and slid the digit into her mouth. Looking him in the eye, she gave her finger a little suck. “Ooh,” she murmured around it.

Then laughed as he dove for her, divested her of her plate and glass and drove her flat against the couch cushions with the weight of his hard body.

P
OPPY JERKED
, coming back to her surroundings with the bump and burn of a space shuttle reentering earth’s atmosphere. Blinking, licking her lips, she looked down at her hands, which still held the plate of yellow-green paint, although the Popsicle stick she’d been using to stir it with was frozen midwhisk. Holy sh—She blew out a gusty exhale. Had she gotten sucked into the waltz-down-memory-lane time/space continuum, or what? Shaking the last of the lingering memories that trailed like cobwebs from her mind, she rose to her feet and took the paint over to Henry.

She was soon absorbed in showing the teen how to dot the color along the lizard’s underbelly and around its protuberant eye. Yet her head inexplicably lifted several moments later. Looking toward the corner, she saw Jason rounding Harvey’s building.

He moved with his habitual loose-limbed grace, a long, lean man in white shirtsleeves, loosened tie, slacks and suspenders. He had his hands in his pockets and his suit jacket looped over one arm. He must have locked his gun in the car, because he didn’t appear to be wearing it. That was a direct contradiction of the man she’d come to know this past week. Still, the day had turned sunny and warm, so perhaps he hadn’t wanted to publicly reveal the weapon when he’d removed his jacket.

As she watched, his step developed an almost imperceptible hitch and he extracted a hand from his slacks to dig through his jacket’s inside breast pocket. His rummaging around made the jacket shift over his arm, and Poppy nodded.

Aha. Mystery solved. The butt of his gun stuck out from his waistband, disguised up until then by the way he’d been carrying his suit coat.

Retrieving a cell phone, he flipped it open, glanced at its screen and brought it up to his ear. He continued toward them as he listened to the person on the other end, but then stopped. Looking across the distance that separated them, he met her gaze and held up a lean finger in the universal gonna-be-a-minute signal.

And why that simple gesture should trigger the abrupt rush of emotion that boiled through her like steam through a clam cooker she could not say. Yet all of a sudden she was suffused with dead-certain knowledge. She stared at him in wonderment.

Ho-ly—

Ohmigaw—

She sucked in a breath. Blew it out again.

And faced her reality head on. Dear. Freakin’. Lord.

She’d gone and fallen in love with the man.

J
ASE SNAPPED
his phone closed a longer while later than he’d anticipated and noticed that the kids, directed by Poppy, were packing up their supplies in the trunk of her POS car. Watching her laugh as she supervised the positioning of the paint cans and various other materials and supplies, he was visited again by a suspicion that had been nipping at him for a few days now.

Hell, more than a few. Truth was, except for the day they’d first made love and he’d announced his intention to move in, the feeling that he was chasing the wrong lead had nagged at him this entire past week. He’d been going ’round and around the track with no more apparent purpose than a greyhound blindly pursuing its mechanical rabbit. The more time he spent with Poppy, the less likely it seemed that she was the one who’d attracted the ladder-sabotaging, car-as-a-weapon-wielding enemy they appeared to be dealing with.

God knew the woman wasn’t shy about giving attitude. For the most part, however, that was reserved for him.

And even then, usually only when it came to her kids. She was the height of professionalism or easy friendliness with everyone else he’d ever watched her deal with. Hell, Poppy was an open book, period. What you saw was what you got. People always knew exactly where they stood with her; she simply wasn’t the type to hide her feelings. Which made her keeping a deep dark secret that would attract someone bent on taking her out of the picture very unlikely.

There had been problems at the mansion last fall, but as far as he could see it had been centered strictly around her friend Jane. The Kavanaghs had come up clean when he’d run them in conjunction with the break-in there, and he wasn’t sure just where he could take an investigation beyond that.

He’d been trying to deconstruct the situations that had gone down around here. So his first order of the day today had been to talk to Marlene Stories to find out whether she’d hired someone to work on her roof the day the wrench had damn near bounced off Poppy’s head.

It turned out that, yeah, she had had a guy up there patching a leak around her skylight. A guy who matched the description of the man who had poked his head over the edge to apologize after the tool plummeted from the roof. So that appeared to have been a legitimate accident.

Which was good. It cut down on the fricking psycho factor.

But damned if Jase intended to write off the other two incidents as accidents as well. Like he’d told Poppy last week, he didn’t believe in coincidence. And while two back-to-back accidents were statistically possible, they sure as hell weren’t probable. Neither could he discount Poppy’s adamant conviction regarding her father’s dedication to keeping his equipment in tip-top shape. Or Henry’s oath that the car that had almost hit her and Cory had barreled without hesitation straight at them.

At them. Her and Cory. Once you took the wrench out of the equation and figured that there was no eff’n way of knowing in advance which of them would have used the ladder that day, Poppy was no longer odds-on-favorite as the intended victim.

Much as he wracked his brain, however, he couldn’t come up with a scenario that made any more sense for someone wanting to harm Cory. Still, something had been up with the kid lately. And his instincts told him she was the common denominator in this scenario. The connection he’d been looking for.

Unfortunately, he knew demanding answers of a teenage girl before he had a glimmer of what the hell he was even looking for would be one huge exercise in futility. Might as well grab a ball-peen hammer and smack himself in the head with it a few times—he’d probably have the same degree of success.

Not to mention the headache waiting to happen if he gave the girl the third degree in front of Poppy.

Oh, yeah. He could just visualize that going down. Like the Babe would ever, in a million years, sit still for it. Hell, without probable cause, she’d be right not to.

But that had been his snitch on the phone. And the guy promised some very interesting information about tagger kids disappearing and how it might connect with Jase’s jewelry-store robberies.

“Yo, copper!”

He looked over to Henry, who yelled, “See ya!” and headed for the back door to Harvey’s, where he’d been working off and on.

The other kids took off as well and Poppy was closing the trunk as he strode up to her. “Gotta go,” he said. “I’ve got an informant with a possible lead that might be connected to the shit going down around here.”

She raised her eyebrows at him. “And he couldn’t just tell you over the phone?”

“Snitches aren’t big on giving away intel without seeing the green.” He started to lean in to kiss her goodbye, then caught himself and snapped upright. “Where are you headed next?”

“I’m free for the rest of the day. I’m gonna go to the mansion and get a little painting done on Miss A.’s bedroom suite.”

“Anyone else going to be around?”

“The Kavanagh bros are still working on the kitchen, so I imagine some of them.”

“Okay, good. I’ll see you later.”

She grabbed him by the tie, rose up on her toes and pulled his head down for a kiss. Immediately fired up, he was sinking into it, bracing himself against her car and pulling her close, his hands diving into her hair to grip her head, when she broke the connection and settled back on her heels.

“Yes, you will,” she agreed, stroking his jaw. Then she stepped away and climbed in the driver’s seat. “See you at home.”

Thrusting his hand through his hair, Jase pushed away from the car, then stood gripping the back of his neck as he watched her drive away. When she turned the corner and disappeared from sight, he crossed the lot to his own car.

Jesus. Ever since he’d made love to her, he barely rec ognized himself. They’d had sex one time and he’d moved in?

He could still see Murph’s face when he’d gone back to his place that day to grab some stuff and stopped by to tell his friend where he could be found for the next whatever. The old man hadn’t said, Are you out of your mind! He hadn’t tried to talk him out of it. He’d followed Jase up to his apartment then sat around grinning while Jase gathered his toothbrush, shaving kit and an armload of clothing. Grinning, for Christ sake. As though it were natural for a guy with Jase’s dicked-up history to move in with Poppy.

What the hell was that all about? Sure, Jase had been determined on his course. That hadn’t stopped him from questioning himself. Yet Murph thought it was all just swell?

And that had been when Jase had genuinely feared Poppy was in danger.

Now he was ninety-some-percent certain she wasn’t. She didn’t need his protection. Yet all the same…

See you at home, she’d said. Home.

Where she hummed as she worked over her greeting cards while he pored through case notes across the table from her.

Where she fed him homemade meal after homemade meal.

Where he felt…good.

She hadn’t called it her house. She’d said home. As if it were his, too.

And in that moment he lost what feeble intention he’d ever had of moving out.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Big L? Am I really contemplating the Big L?

P
OPPY HADN’T BEEN
in the mansion half an hour before Jane and Ava showed up. “Hey,” she said, looking up from the trim she was painting. “You two have radar or something?”

“Nah, something better. A husband who’s been warned he better give me a jingle the minute he lays eyes on you.” Jane pinned her with a look. “You’ve been avoiding us, Missy.”

Ah, hell. She carefully placed her brush across the corner of her paint tray and rose to her feet.

And tried to prevaricate. “What are you talking about?”

Okay, she obviously stunk at it now every bit as much as she had as a kid, because Ava said, “Oh, please,” and Jane tapped her Michael Kors patent leather demi-wedge shoe on Miss A.’s gleaming wooden floor.

“Give it up, Calloway,” she said. “You never could lie worth a damn. What the hell have you got to hide anyway? It’s not like you’ve been holed up with a hot stud all week and are holding out on us instead of sharing all the steamy details as per the BFF bylaws.”

“Ooh, that’s a good one,” Ava said. “Funny, though, how you never mentioned any bylaws when you were making time with Dev.” She waved her hand. “But that’s just nitpicking, since you’ve got the bottom line right. Poppy hasn’t had a hot date in, well, almost as long as me—never mind being shacked up with a hottie.” She flashed Poppy a comrade-in-arms grin.

Come on, face, don’t fail me now. C’mon, c’mon, you can do this—shit!

Both friends’ jaws went slack and Ava said, “You have, haven’t you? You’ve been shacked up with a hottie this past week! Who on earth—? Oh, my God. Detective Sheik?”

“Tell me he’s not the one,” Jane begged. But that, too, was apparently written on her face, because her friend heaved a big sigh. “Hell. It is.” She sank down to sit cross-legged on the floor with no regard for the panties she was flashing beneath her rucked-up skirt.

Ava joined her, but demurely curved her legs to one side, even though she was wearing slacks and could have sprawled out any which way. Her dimples nowhere in evidence, she bent a stern look on Poppy. “You will dish if you know what’s good for you, sister.”

And she did; grabbing her own spot on the floor, she told her friends everything. Well, almost everything; she didn’t mention the so-called threat that had driven Jason to move in with her in the first place, because she knew she wasn’t in danger, and she didn’t want her friends to worry. And she kept the sexual details to herself.