Love Game (3 page)

I recognized all of the police officers. Unfortunately, I had had more than my share of dealing with law enforcement since moving into town.

“Lord have mercy, the cops,” Lucy said. “Gladie, you distract them, and I’ll get Harry to safety.”

I rolled my eyes. “Uncle Harry looks fine, Lucy. Besides, how am I supposed to distract them?”

“Take your shirt off. Use your feminine wiles.”

“I’m not going to use my feminine wiles.” I wasn’t sure I had any wiles, and if I did, I wasn’t sure what I would do with them. Besides, wiles could be dangerous, and there was one person present I needed to keep my wiles far away from.

Lucy jumped out of the car and ran toward the group. I followed her, wishing my suitcase had been spider-free and that I wasn’t dressed like a homeless person.

Spencer Bolton, Cannes’s chief of police and a womanizing, hottie hunk, turned sharply toward me as I approached. His mouth dropped open in surprise, and his chest inflated as he gulped air. He made my blood pressure rise and my pulse race. I didn’t want him to know how much I wanted to watch him strip naked while I ate chips, but I suspected he already knew. The familiar car was his.

“Uncle Harry, I’m here,” Lucy said, stating the obvious. Gone was the sophisticated, sure-of-herself Southern
belle I had grown to know during the past five months, and in her place was a quivering five-foot-eight mass of Jell-O. Six foot even in her heels. Well, the unbroken heel, anyway.

Uncle Harry stood no taller than five foot four, his balding head reaching Lucy’s sternum. Lucy giggled wildly when he said hello to her. I squidged my eyes, trying to see what she saw.

“Mr. Lupino, this development is an eyesore,” the tall lady said to Uncle Harry. “A blot on the historic nature of our town. You are a cancer on this land. I cannot allow you to spread.”

She sounded like Katharine Hepburn, with a wobble in her voice and a slight English accent. She was formidable even in her age and, I imagined, a force to be reckoned with. Even so, I took a cowardly step back in case Uncle Harry decided to shoot her or let loose his dogs.

“Mrs. Arbuthnot, would you excuse me?” Spencer asked the woman, and walked quickly toward me.

“I’m only here for moral support,” I said, trying to duck behind Lucy.

He grasped my arm and pulled me down the driveway, away from the group. “Move!” he ordered the security guard, and closed us in the guard’s shack. There wasn’t quite enough room in there for two. Spencer placed his hands on the wall above my shoulders and leaned in close.

“You have been avoiding me for weeks,” he said. His breath was minty fresh and made me wish for Christmas so I could eat him like a candy cane.

“Have I?” I croaked.

“Yes. You know we have to talk about what happened.”

“Forget about it, Spencer. Let’s pretend nothing happened.”

He leaned in closer, his lips almost touching mine.

“I don’t want to forget it,” he said.

I TRIED
to squirm away, but Spencer pinned me to the wall of the security shack with his body.

“You smell nice,” he said.

“Bug spray.”

“I’m not sure what you’re doing with your hair here, though.” He ran his fingers over my frizzy ponytail,
making it flop over my face and sending my blood racing through my veins.

“I was in my grandma’s shed,” I explained.

He traced the lettering on my sweatshirt. “This outfit is working for me. I like when you’re into sports.”

“I found this sweatshirt when I was working at the morgue.” I had never worked at the morgue, but I needed all the help I could get in turning off Spencer Bolton.

“Morgue. Interesting,” he mumbled, his lips tracing the curve of my neck.

“Off a dead … off a dead … corpse.” My traitorous arms wrapped around Spencer’s back and pulled him even closer. Geez, he was talented with his lips, like he had been trained as a lip ninja or something.

“Lip ninja,” I moaned.

“I’m all kinds of ninja,” he said. That was the truth. Spencer had lip-ninja’d his way through town and probably farther than that. The thought sobered me up. I tried to push him away again.

“Shouldn’t we get back to Uncle Harry and Mrs. Arbuthnot?” I asked. “We’re in a security shack. This is probably illegal.”

“Since when did you worry about what’s legal or not?” But he had sobered, too. He stood up straight, creating space between us. “Time to talk about what happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Exactly,” he agreed. “Exactly!” His face dropped, an expression of agony. I almost felt sorry for him, but it was difficult to feel sorry for Spencer. He had more than his share of ego, and it was comforting to see him deflate to normal.

“You look nice,” I said, changing the subject.

He smirked his annoying little smirk and straightened his jacket. “You like it? Armani. I got a whole new wardrobe. My credit cards will never be the same.”

The month before, a crazed former lover had cut up all of Spencer’s clothes. He deserved it, of course, and it was a fitting punishment for a confirmed metrosexual.

But, damn, Spencer looked good in a fitted suit.

“Pinkie, you’re going to find yourself naked in this shack if you look at me like that another second.”

I blinked. “What’s the deal with Mrs. Arbuthnot? Grandma says she’s been a lemonhead ever since she moved here a couple years ago.” Grandma was pretty dead-on with that description. Mrs. Arbuthnot pursed her lips—even when she spoke—as if she had just sucked on a lemon.

“Harry is working on a new development, and she’s head of the Cannes Responsible Growth Commission. Nothing too serious.”

“Responsible growth? Sounds dermatological.”

“Why are you here?” His expression had changed as he finally realized I was meddling where I didn’t belong.

“I’m with Lucy. Uncle Harry wanted us,” I said, before he could yell at me. My interfering in police business was Spencer’s number-one pet peeve. Not that I ever wanted to get involved in police business. It just so happened that I found myself in more than my share of murder and mayhem.

“All I want are spider-free clothes that will keep me warm,” I explained.

“I’ll keep you warm.”

I stepped around him and opened the door. “Don’t worry about it, Spencer. It wasn’t your fault. Nothing happened for a reason. I made a mistake going to you that day. It was for the best that nothing happened.”

I was halfway back to Harry’s porch when Spencer caught up to me. “But that’s never happened to me before!” he announced loudly.

Mrs. Arbuthnot, Harry, and the others standing on Harry’s porch gave Spencer their undivided attention. Waiting, I figured, for him to give a few more details on what exactly had never happened to him before. The moment Spencer realized he was the center of attention registered on his face with a blush of embarrassment.

I was surprised that such a little thing would embarrass him, and I was about to tell him so when the attention shifted to me.

“Darlin’, were you feeling a bit warm?” Lucy asked me. I followed her gaze and glanced down. My sweatshirt and undershirt were rolled up, revealing my Walmart white cross-my-heart bra. Somehow, Spencer had bared my torso without me noticing. I quickly pulled my shirts down and shot Spencer a nasty look. This seemed to perk him up, and his irritating smirk reappeared.

“Mrs. Arbuthnot, you can file a complaint at the town hall,” Spencer told her, his cop demeanor back in full force. “Meanwhile, this is private property and you have to leave, or I will have Officer James arrest you.”

“Listen, Sparky,” she spat. “Complaints go nowhere. I need action.”

“Yeah, Sparky,” I said. “What are you going to do about it?”

Spencer shot me a dirty look, and I cowered behind Uncle Harry.

Lucy got in Mrs. Arbuthnot’s face, growling, “Back up, woman, this is private property.” She was like one of Uncle Harry’s Rottweilers: protective, frothing at the mouth, and not above biting.

Spencer stepped between the two women. “Take it to local media,” he suggested.

“You mean the Cannes circular?” Mrs. Arbuthnot asked him. He was a good five inches taller than her, but she had a way of looking down her nose at people that made her seem seven feet tall.

And then it was over. Satisfied or not with Spencer’s suggestion, Mrs. Arbuthnot turned on her thick, square heel and left Uncle Harry’s porch. She maneuvered her Prius through the gate to retrieve her little group of elderly people and drove off.

“Hi there, Legs,” Uncle Harry greeted me when the Prius drove out of sight. “What a nice surprise.”

“What do you mean ‘surprise’?” Lucy asked. “You called me and told me to bring her.”

“Did I?”

I shot daggers at Lucy with my eyes. I was wasting half the day on this field trip when I should have been de-spidering my winter clothes. And then there was the minor fact of her destroying my coffee supply with her car and forcing me into an unwanted discussion with Spencer.

“I swear, Gladie, I got a call from a man saying he was Uncle Harry. It sounded exactly like him,” Lucy whined.

“Well, are we done here?” I asked. “I have just enough time to drop off my clothes.” I envisioned the spider eggs hatching in my sweaters. I imagined them weaving their tiny legs into the threads of my favorite light-blue V-neck acrylic sweater—which I had passed off for cashmere on more than one occasion—and growing to full size as I slipped it over my head. I shivered. I needed to get professional cleaning fast or I would have to dump my winter clothes. And there was a noticeable chill in the air.

“I can’t afford real cashmere, Lucy,” I said, slightly panicked.

“Are you all right?” Lucy asked Uncle Harry, totally ignoring me. Her sudden neediness where the no-neck Uncle Harry was concerned was starting to turn my stomach.

It was either that or the three cupcakes I had eaten on the ride over.

With the army of elderly, antidevelopment hippies gone, the police hopped into their cars, but Spencer was rooted to the spot in the driveway, standing with his hands balled into fists at his sides and eyeing me with a definite sense of purpose. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was working on his courage.

Uncle Harry ignored Spencer, and with the front porch cleared of everyone except him, Lucy, and me, he changed his attitude.

“I’m fine,” he whispered, looking around nervously. “Come inside, quick.” He opened the door and pushed Lucy and me into the house. We were greeted by his two Rottweilers, fearsome creatures with snapping teeth and what I imagined to be a hankering for the
tasty flesh of single girl. I smashed my body up against the wall and shut my eyes tight.

“Quiet,” Uncle Harry said, and, just like that, the dogs scattered. I took a deep breath and clutched my throat. Yep, it was still there. No Rottweilers attached to my jugular. Phew. I didn’t want to die like that, eaten by dogs. It was way down on my list, in fact. Below Ebola but a notch above flesh-eating bacteria.

Lucy and I followed Uncle Harry through the house. It was huge, a mansion. I had been there before, but it still impressed me. The living room had high ceilings and wood paneling, a lot like Hearst Castle, with a view of the mountains through a wall of glass.

Uncle Harry’s butler/manservant came into the room with a full tea service in his huge hands. He was a dead ringer for Lurch, and I expected him to say, “You rang?” but instead he reminded Uncle Harry that his poker buddies would arrive momentarily.

Harry hosted a regular poker game for a group of old cronies, who resembled the cast of
The Sopranos
. His game room was at the back of the house, with a King Arthur-like round table and erotic tapestries on the walls. He had invited me to play once, but the stakes were too rich for my blood.

Sure enough, the doorbell rang, and Lurch went to welcome in the first player. Uncle Harry motioned for me to sit. “I’ll make this quick,” he said. “I did ask you to come here. I want to hire you.”

I looked behind me to see who he was talking to. Nobody was there.

“You want to hire
Gladie
?” Lucy’s voice came out an octave higher than normal.

“You want to hire
me
?” I asked.

“As a
matchmaker
?” Lucy asked, as if it was the craziest thing in the world to hire me as a matchmaker. She had a point.