Loves Me, Loves Me Knot (5 page)

She shrugged one slim shoulder, hoping he’d buy what she was selling, because Lord knew she didn’t have a clue what else to say to convince him to accept the offering.

Thankfully, he lifted the pressure by reaching out for the bottle and taking a quick first swig. A small wave of relief washed over her as she mentally checked that step off her list. If she could just keep him drinking, then this plan might actually have a shot at working.

“So where’s this leak?” he asked, picking up his toolbox. The hand holding the beer lowered to thigh level at his side and he clutched the neck between two fingers.

Realizing there wasn’t much chance of getting him to imbibe more of the doped Corona right this minute, she dragged her gaze up from his strong, tanned hand to his equally strong, tanned face . . . and slurped up her tongue long enough to tilt her head and turn for the stairs.

“This way.” She spun around to lead him in the opposite direction . . . and nearly did a three-sixty as the
room whirled around her and her feet failed to stop when they should have. Catching herself, she took a second to regain her balance, then started forward, hoping he hadn’t noticed her imitation of Drunken Ballerina Barbie.

She’d never considered herself inherently sexy, and she’d lucked out when she’d met Gage, because he’d always seemed to find her attractive enough just the way she was. She hadn’t needed to doll herself up or bat her lashes or slap on layers of makeup and lip gloss to catch his attention. There’d been an instant and unmistakable zap of electricity between them that had never required play-acting or embellishment.

Even so, as they made their way up the narrow stairwell to the second floor, Jenna found herself purposely swishing her hips, taking exaggerated Mae West steps that put her a couple of feet ahead of Gage and hopefully kept her rear end at his eye level.

Until the sleeping pills mixed with his beer kicked in, she had only her feminine wiles to lure him. And since they’d been divorced for almost two years now, she wasn’t certain her appearance or flirting skills would have the same effect on him as when they were married.

At the top of the stairs, she took her time rounding the newel post, keeping her hand on the carved wood and drawing her fingers slowly—seductively, she hoped—along the railing. It also helped to keep her steady, but he didn’t need to know that.

Gage didn’t say anything, simply followed along behind, his big boots thumping first on the creaky old stairs, then along the creaky hallway floor.

That was the thing about two-hundred-year-old houses,
she thought absently as they approached the upstairs bathroom. Everything tended to be squeaky, rickety, and in constant need of repair.

Jenna liked her aunt’s old farmhouse, though. It had a comfortable, homey feel to it, and was filled with a million childhood memories. Not just her own, but those of all the generations that had come before.

Keeping with Charlotte’s unique—okay, quirky—sense of style, the upstairs powder room was crazy and colorful. The walls were a watermelon pink so bright, it almost hurt to look at them. There was no window in the room, but both an overhead lamp and rows of tiny bulbs on either side of the mirror above the sink provided plenty of light.

With her own overzealous hand, Charlotte had made a shower curtain of fabric that contained both neon checks
and
huge, oddly shaped flowers in colors that were equally bright and didn’t quite match the blocks, but didn’t clash, either.

Alone, the curtain might not have been too bad. But, of course, her aunt hadn’t stopped there. She’d added a rubber duckie soap dish, a giraffe toothbrush holder, a SpongeBob SquarePants Dixie cup dispenser, and a rainbow trout towel rack that held a black towel and washcloth set. (Black, of all colors, when there was nothing else black—save perhaps some miniscule outlining on the shower curtain design—in the entire room.)

But that wasn’t all. Charlotte had also knit several Southern belle toilet paper covers and had them strategically displayed. Three lined up along the back of the commode, two on the floor on either side of the toilet, and one across the room on the floor at the opposite
end of the white porcelain tub. Just in case, you know, there was a major toilet paper emergency. Like maybe a Girl Scout troop dropped by and all needed their tushies wiped at the same time.

Martha Stewart, her aunt definitely was
not
. Although, ironically, Charlotte’s bedroom and the rest of the house was actually rather normal and mundane. There were a lot of antiques sprinkled around, and a few unusual pieces here or there, but nothing that would put someone in fear for their life.

Gage wasn’t afraid, though. Jenna doubted much of anything scared him, frankly, and he’d been around Charlotte and Charlotte’s old farm house enough while they were married that he probably wouldn’t have been surprised if a litter of rabid squirrels jumped out of the linen closet.

Before he’d arrived, Grace and Jenna had raced around the upstairs, putting things to wrong. She’d told Gage there was a plumbing leak when there really wasn’t, so they’d had to create one.

To that end, Grace had loosened a pipe fixture under the sink, and they’d used a couple of the SpongeBob Dixie cups to splash water here and there as though the pipes had been dripping for quite a while, then sopped it up with extra towels. The towels were still on the floor, wadded up and wet and screaming for a cleanup crew.

“Sorry about the mess,” Jenna said, kicking at one of the towels with the toe of her shoe. “I tried to keep the water from spreading too far.”

“No problem,” he murmured, setting his beer on the sink and his toolbox on the floor, then kneeling down to study the vanity’s inner workings.

Worrying a thumbnail between her front teeth, Jenna stood in the doorway and watched, praying he wouldn’t figure out that she and her friends had staged the leak to lure him out to the house. He didn’t seem suspicious as he turned the knob to shut off the flow of water to the pipes, twisted this and felt around that.

“I don’t see any cracks or corrosion,” he said.

She didn’t respond, afraid that anything she said might blow the whole charade.

Gage flipped around, lying down on his back to stare up at the bottom of the sink basin. “Can you hand me—”

Before he’d even finished his sentence, Jenna had the bottle of Corona shoved into his hand.

“Um . . .” He looked at her oddly. “Thanks, but I was actually going to ask for a wrench.”

“Oh.” She gave a nervous, too high-pitched laugh. “Sorry about that. But you might as well enjoy it,” she added, crouching down beside his toolbox to search for what he needed.

When she found it, rather than handing it to him, she stood back and waited. He continued to eye her strangely, but she held her ground.

Finally, he took a slow sip of beer before setting the bottle aside. As soon as he did, she handed him the wrench.

“Thanks,” he muttered, reluctantly pulling his attention away from his exhibiting-blatant-signs-of-psychosis ex-wife to once again tinker beneath the sink.

She liked to think that after this was all over, he’d believe her when she said she hadn’t gone off the deep
end and wasn’t in need of a Thorazine Big Gulp, but something told her that wasn’t going to happen.

It was a shame, too, because as she stood there, staring down at him lying on the floor, she couldn’t help but wish things had worked out between them. That she had a right to ogle his body, admire the play of muscles beneath his tight T-shirt and the way he filled out a pair of Levis.

And he filled them out well. Really, really well.

“You’ve got a loose fitting under here, so I tightened it, but I don’t see anything else that should be causing a leak.”

Sliding back out from under the vanity, he used a corner of one of the towels to dry the pipes, then turned the water back on and tested his work. When everything remained dry, he slapped his hands together, wiped them on the front of his jeans, and returned the wrench to the toolbox.

“I don’t know how that got loose, but you should be okay now. At the very least, it will hold until you can get a professional out here next week.”

“Thanks. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

That sounded good, right? Now she just had to figure out how to get the rest of that Corona—and maybe a second one—into him before he could leave.

To that end, she rushed around him, plucking up the wet towels and tossing them into the bathtub, then grabbing the bottle of beer while he collected the toolbox.

Gage stepped out of the small powder room, moving toward the stairs, and a shaft of panic stabbed through Jenna’s heart.

“Wait!” she cried, reaching out with both arms as though that gesture alone could draw him back and keep him there a bit longer.

Cocking his head to one side, he did exactly as she asked—he waited. For her to say something, do something, give him a reason not to climb back in his car and drive back to town.

And she was trying, she really was. Her mind was doing its best to race, to grasp for an excuse. But a couple pitchers of margaritas and enough Mexican food to feed Santa Anna’s army had made her brain sluggish.

A dozen responses would have rolled off Grace’s tongue by now, with a dozen more lined up and ready to go. Ronnie would have simply grabbed him by the collar and kissed him into submission.

But, for better or worse, Jenna wasn’t like either of her friends. She may have been married to Gage for three years before things had started to go downhill, but that didn’t mean she knew what to say or how to handle him. She wasn’t sure she ever had.

“Jenna?” he prompted when she stood there like a crash test dummy. “Was there something else?”

Eyes wide, mouth open and working like a guppy’s, she made a high, squeaking sound that caused Gage to blink. He probably thought she was having a seizure and was about to swallow her tongue.

Then she blurted, “The bedroom!”

He blinked again.

“There’s a . . . um, lamp in the guest bedroom that hasn’t been working quite right. I’m afraid the wiring might be faulty and I worry about it starting a fire.”

Lifting a hand to his chin, he rubbed his jaw, his
fingers making a slight scratching sound as they scraped against the dark beard stubble growing there. He shook his head slightly, and she knew she had him about as confused as a man could get.

“Jenna, I’m no electrician. I—”

“Please?” she asked, instilling her tone with what she hoped was just the right amount of pleading. “I’m out here all by myself for two weeks. I don’t want to lie awake nights worrying about the house burning down around me.”

Gage sighed. “Fine. Lead the way.”

“Great.” She beamed at him and moved down the hall, pushing open the door to the room where she was staying.

As he brushed past her, she once again shoved the bottle of Corona into his free hand. “Here, finish your beer before you start, though. You deserve it.”

Instead of following him inside as she probably should have, she slowly moved away. “I’ve got another one in the fridge. I’ll just go get it for you. Be right back.”

Sidestepping along the railing that ran the length of the upstairs hallway with a too-bright, too-wide smile stretching her lips, she quickly spun around the banister and danced down the stairs . . .
not
breaking her neck, thank goodness, although there were a couple times when her feet slipped and she nearly took a header.

This wasn’t part of the plan, she knew. Grace would crown her if she knew Jenna was running
away
from the bedroom where she’d finally managed to corner Gage.

But she needed that beer, darn it. She needed Gage to drink it, and drink it fast.

If he didn’t . . . Well, if she couldn’t get it into him, then she’d just drink it herself and be done with this whole stress-inducing, blood pressure-raising, faint-worthy mess.

While Jenna was off God knew where doing God knew what, Gage touched the bottle of Corona to his lips and took a long swallow, wondering what Jenna was up to. It didn’t take a detective—which he just happened to be—to figure out that she was drunk off her ass, he just didn’t know
why
. Or what had apparently caused her to drunk-dial him after more than a year of no direct contact or one-on-one conversations between them.

He’d bet a month’s pay she was up to something.

Or maybe she wasn’t up to anything, but was simply nervous about having him around when they normally made a point of keeping Zack, Grace, Dylan, and Ronnie around as buffers.

But he still got the feeling there was more to it than that.

The minor bathroom issue that could have been resolved with a single twist of a wrist.

The sudden need to have a lamp looked at in her bedroom, when she could have just unplugged it and told her aunt she should have an electrician check over the house’s wiring when she got back.

The cold bottle of beer shoved into his hand the minute he walked through the door, and the second one she literally ran downstairs to retrieve.

That was the strangest thing of all. Even while they’d been married, he could count on one hand the number of times Jenna had greeted him at the door with a cold beer. Or brought him a beer at all, unless he’d asked her to.

If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect she was trying to get him drunk, too.

Of course, he shrugged off that thought as soon as it popped into his brain, because even Jenna could figure out that it would take a heck of a lot more than two beers to put him under the table. He was a big guy; two six-packs might not even have done it.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been three sheets to the wind, let alone flat-out, ass-on-the-ground drunk, but if it was going to happen, it would take something stronger than Corona.

Taking another pull from the bottle in his hand, he set his toolbox down beside the bed and flipped the switch to turn on the lamp Jenna had complained about. It came on smoothly, with no flickers or sizzles that might signal an electrical problem.