Flirting With Disaster (3 page)

“Tom,” Jill said as she leaped up to open the second bottle, “you’re my new favorite person. Why don’t you just move in here and I’ll feed you every day.”

“Don’t tempt me, because I might.”

Isabelle watched them grin at each other as Jill poured him a glass. All right. So, Jill liked him. But Jill liked almost everyone. She was terrible at being a hermit. In the summertime, she sometimes offered lemonade to hikers when they passed by. If any hikers had the nerve to show up at Isabelle’s door, she told them to use the hose for water.

“To new friends,” Tom said, tapping his glass to Jill’s. Isabelle hesitated a moment, but when he reached forward, she tapped his glass before taking a healthy gulp of wine.

“So where are you from, Isabelle?”

The wine soured in her throat as she swallowed hard. It might raise his suspicions if she spewed it all over the table at such a seemingly innocent question. Instead of choking, she cleared her throat. “Washington State,” she said.

“I thought I heard an accent.”

Her heart beat harder, but she shrugged. “My parents were from Cincinnati. I must’ve picked it up from them.” Okay, a Cincinnati accent wasn’t quite the same as Chicago, but her accent was subtle enough at this point. She waited to see if he’d press harder, but he didn’t.

“I lived in Oregon for a time,” he said instead. “I miss the moisture.”

“And the oxygen?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’ve gotta say, even coming from Cheyenne is a change here. I notice it every time.”

“And how often do you come to Jackson?”

She’d tried to make it a friendly question, but she could tell by the way his eyebrow twitched up that she’d gone too far toward flirtation. The wine had blurred her boundary between politeness and leering, apparently. Oh, well. If there was a chance he didn’t know who she was, she had to be less hostile. She went all in and smiled.

“It depends on the court schedule,” he finally said. “Most of us are based out of Cheyenne, since places like Jackson and Mammoth don’t need a full-time marshal. Sometimes I’m out here once a month. Sometimes once a quarter. But this time I’m getting my fill.”

He sounded sincere. Believable. He had good reason to be here, and he wasn’t even new to town. So maybe everything he’d said had been the truth from the start. A rush of near painful relief rolled over her at the mere chance that he wasn’t here for her.

Isabelle sat back in her chair and watched as he and Jill talked. He had a nice smile and a deep, rough laugh that made her feel bad she’d been rude to him for no reason. It was a bit of guilt, yes, and maybe a little affection for his looks, but mostly she regretted drawing attention by being suspiciously hostile. That had been dumb. But she’d been caught by surprise, and it wasn’t as if she’d been trained by the witness protection program in how to avoid discovery.

She’d tried her best to erase her identity, yes. But they’d been basic choices. She’d gone to Seattle first, smart enough to use cash and not credit cards only because she’d been exposed to cop talk at the dinner table. But everything else had been one terrifying blind choice after another. She’d never even lived on her own before. She’d never had to choose an apartment or buy a car, much less make contacts to buy a new name and social security number.

First there’d been Seattle, then a smaller town a year later. And finally she’d moved to Jackson.

That had been it. No one asked questions. No one even noticed her. She was average in almost every way. Average height, average build, average brown hair color, mildly average face. Aside from that, the only noticeable things about her were her size D breasts and odd career. She’d found it fairly easy to keep those under wraps.

She’d made friends with Jill right away. It had been impossible not to. Not only was Jill irresistibly friendly, but she also always brought
food
. Isabelle had been hanging out at her place within days.

Aside from a few brief affairs and a few more one-night stands, meals with Jill had been the extent of Isabelle’s social life for years. She had a PO box in town, so the mail carrier never bothered her. She couldn’t get pizza delivered, so there were no wild pizza-boy scenarios acted out. And the only other neighbors were separated from her and Jill by the deep, shadowed forests of ponderosa pines and aspen.

She liked it that way. She reveled in it. She felt almost safe. But things had changed last year. After dozens of trips to the library over the years to pick up interlibrary loans of rare, specialized anatomy books, one of the librarians had started a conversation. An interesting conversation. And Isabelle’s bubble of isolation had finally popped.

Lauren Foster was a good friend now. And Sophie Heyer, another librarian. Those two women had pulled Isabelle further out of her comfort zone by insisting on girls’ nights out every other Sunday.

But there hadn’t been much room for men. Not enough room. Her lies wouldn’t accommodate a long-term relationship, and neither would her heart. So she’d had a man for a week or a month at a time here and there, but never more than that.

Maybe that explained why she found herself watching Tom as he spoke, wondering if those lips would taste as good as they looked. Or if those shoulders were as wide as they seemed.

She shook her head. She needed more wine. Or less. Or she just needed to get laid. But definitely not by a US marshal.

But it didn’t matter tonight. Tonight she was full of wonderful food and less afraid of why he’d shown up on her doorstep. There was more wine, dessert was waiting and nobody was asking anything about her father. She’d be able to paint tomorrow. She could feel it.

As if the universe was offering a reward for her new good mood, Tom unbuttoned the left sleeve of his shirt and began to roll it up as he told Jill a story about a fugitive who’d fallen into an icy creek.

“The thing was, he wouldn’t come out.” His wrist was exposed first. The same tan color as the back of his hand, dark against the white cotton of his shirt. “His lips were turning blue. He couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t even speak anymore. But he refused to come out.”

Now the start of his forearm, slim but much harder than hers, muscles visible even at rest.

“None of us wanted to go in after him. It was probably twenty-five degrees in the sun, and the creek was solid ice around the banks. We just stared at each other across the water, waiting for someone to break. I mean, this guy was going to die, and the office kind of frowns on that.”

Now the thickest part of his forearm, the rolled cuff starting to tighten up around it. He was just as tan here, but the light from the wrought-iron chandelier skimmed his skin and caught on the hair of his arms, glinting golden and bright.

“So what happened?” Jill asked.

He grinned. “I broke. I had to do it. I was the senior officer. And holy shit, it was cold. So cold it felt like fire at first. The numbness set in pretty quickly, but that was only the skin. Deeper, in the muscles and joints, it
hurt
. And then when I hit a deeper pool of water...” He shook his head and turned the sleeve up one more roll. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Jill nodded solemnly. “Can you still have children?”

“I doubt it. Then again, they do freeze sperm, right?”

After she stopped laughing, Jill pointed at Tom. “A hero like you deserves dessert. I hope you like cherry pie. It’s Isabelle’s favorite.”

Isabelle laughed. “You make me sound like a bad ’80s sex joke. But I do love cherry pie. Almost as much as Jill does.”

A faint wash of pink appeared on Tom’s cheeks. Was he blushing? That was cute as hell. Maybe he wasn’t used to women joking about sex. But Isabelle had discovered that freedom was the best thing about getting older.

She’d felt a touch of it when she’d turned thirty. She’d suddenly felt less like a big kid blindly feeling her way through the world and more like an adult. Then at thirty-five she’d realized she was at that age when so many women really started to worry. That they were too old now. That they hadn’t married or had children. That this was their
last chance
to really live
.

Isabelle didn’t feel as though this was her last chance. She felt as though she was finally free. Capable. Happy with herself. Comfortable with her body. And allowed to say anything she wanted to out loud, even if it made a grown man blush. Maybe especially if it did.

She loved it. She couldn’t wait to be forty. She was going to own that shit. And then at fifty, when strangers would stop hinting that it was time to settle down and have some babies, and just start looking at her with pity? That would be glorious.

So she grinned at Tom Duncan and took an extra-large piece of pie and didn’t bother stifling her moan of pleasure at the taste. Tonight she was almost sure she was safe, her mouth was sweet and tart with juicy red cherries, and tomorrow she would paint. She had every reason to moan.

* * *

I
SABELLE
W
EST
WASN
’
T
only a mystery. She was also a distraction. First, there was that threadbare shirt, pale blue but marred with paint, and stretched too tight across her breasts whenever she reached for her glass. The shirt looked old enough to be turned into rags, and he’d been very afraid that one of those buttons was going to give way at any moment. So afraid that he’d constantly found himself checking to be sure it was still closed.

Then there was her glare, suspicious and narrow and almost as distracting as the smile she’d finally settled into toward the end of the meal. The cool smile was as interesting as the glare, as if she had a secret to go with every emotion.

Curiosity paced inside his brain like a caged lion. Who was she? Instincts weren’t everything, but Tom had learned to trust his own, and he would’ve bet quite a bit of money that she wasn’t a criminal. But she wasn’t innocent, either. Innocent women didn’t press themselves into a corner to hide and listen the way she’d done at Jill’s house.

“I’d better get going,” she said drowsily from the couch. She was curled up with the last of the wine and didn’t look as if she wanted to leave. “I’ll be painting for hours tomorrow.”

“At least it’s not summer,” Jill said. “You can sleep until eight and still get the morning light.”

“So true. And I’m going to sleep like a baby tonight. A drunk baby.”

Tom stood. “All right, drunk baby, come on. I’ll walk you home.”

Her languidness vanished in an instant. “I don’t need you to walk me home,” she snapped. “I’ve walked home a hundred times in the dark.”

“I’m sure you have. But this time, there might be an armed fugitive hiding in the woods. And I’m leaving anyway. I can either walk you or I can follow behind you. Your choice.”

“Walk her home,” Jill cut in. “Isabelle, put your prickliness away and be nice. Maybe you’ll like the feeling.”

“I doubt it,” Isabelle answered, but she shrugged. “And he already asked to walk me home. Apparently, he likes his girls mean and feral.”

“All the more reason to walk home with him, then.”

Isabelle huffed out a laugh at that then winked in his direction, completely confusing him. His mental state wasn’t helped when she reached to shrug on her coat and her blouse threatened to split in two and reveal the pink bra peeking out underneath.

He spun and walked toward the entryway where he’d left his own coat, but there was no relief there. Isabelle followed close behind to tug on her tall snow boots, leaning over so that her shirt gaped to show the generous rise of her breasts. Tom just shook his head and made himself look elsewhere until she’d finished her task. He, in fact, didn’t like his girls mean and feral. She was not the girl for him.

Then again, he still wasn’t sure he had a read on Isabelle West yet. He wouldn’t say she was mean, exactly. But as for feral...well, there was something a little wild about her. Something unfiltered. She said what she meant and wasn’t coy about her moods.

Jill, waving away Tom’s praise for her food, sent them out the door with warnings about ice on the steps. The woman was truly an amazing cook, not to mention a damn good pastry chef. He’d have to find one of her cookbooks and have Jill sign it for his sister. Wendy adored cooking. And she was terrible at it. But Tom liked to make her happy, so he went to her place once a month for a pleasant, polite evening with Mom and Dad and Wendy’s husband and kids, and he ate her awful dinners without complaint. Cookbooks hadn’t helped in the past, but maybe Jill’s would be the right fit.

“You’ve got Jill wrapped around your finger,” Isabelle said, the words warm instead of accusing.

“You have that turned around. I’d die for that woman.”

Isabelle’s laugh rang loud and pure into the night as they walked down the driveway to the road. “She’s easy to love.”

“But she likes living alone?”

Isabelle shrugged. “Maybe nobody is worthy of her. Or maybe love isn’t all that great.”

He shot her a look, but she was staring straight ahead, her small smile lit by the snow. “And which one is it for you?” he asked.

“Oh, me? I love living alone. And love definitely isn’t all that great.”

He’d heard that kind of sentiment before, but never with such good cheer. “I’d say that’s cynical, but you sound happy about it.”

She finally looked at him. “You’re not wearing a wedding ring. Do you live alone?”

“Yes.”

“No wife or kids? Are you depressed about it? Are you pining away?”

His lips twitched at the idea of sitting in the window of his apartment, staring yearningly into the night, like a sappy scene from a bad movie. “No. But I travel quite a bit.”

“A woman in every port?”

“Not quite,” he said with a grin. “But you make Mammoth and Casper and Cheyenne sound more promising than they are.”

“Exotic locales. Exciting adventures. Femme fatales.”

“I see you’ve been spying on me.”

She nodded, still more reserved with him than she was with Jill. “Well, I don’t travel, but I’m not lonely. I have my work, my friends and my home. And internet porn. Life is good.”